


live to fight another day

by FunAndWhimsy



Series: another day [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abduction, Aliens Made Them Do It, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birth, Biting, Blood and Violence, Blow Jobs, Body Dysphoria, Breathplay, Cunnilingus, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Electrocution, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Exhaustion, F/M, Face-Fucking, Face-Sitting, Fights, First Time, Flashbacks, Forced Pregnancy, Gladiators, Hand Feeding, Implied/Referenced Torture, Isolation, Killing in Cold Blood, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Massage, Medical Examination, Medical Trauma, Memory Loss, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Orgasm Denial, Painplay, Possessive Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Imbalance, Pregnancy, Rape, Rough Sex, Separation Anxiety, Shame, Spanking, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 12:39:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 67,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16598099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunAndWhimsy/pseuds/FunAndWhimsy
Summary: When Pidge and Shiro walked away from the party and straight into an ambush, that was bad enough. When Shiro woke to find himself back in Sendak's arena, that was bad enough. But this time Sendak wants more than an entertaining fight, and bad enough doesn't begin to describe what they're in for.





	1. i: Haxus

**Author's Note:**

> This is an intense one. If you have questions or need clarification about a warning, my [tumblr ask box](http://funandwhimsy.tumblr.com/ask) is open. Otherwise please enjoy this offering to the sorely lacking world of pure Shiro/Pidge filth.
> 
> Thanks as always to my beloved epershand for encouragement and beta reading.

"Sir," Haxus says, a risk to interrupt Sendak but a calculated one. "I think you'll want to see this."

Sendak grumbles but tilts his head to look at the display Haxus shows him, the data from the drone's initial scans of the two paladins. One they know, of course, would recognize from miles away, Sendak's treasured Champion; the other is one of the new ones, part of the group that seemed to come out of nowhere. They're so small, so obviously weak, but more importantly the scan shows they have inverted genitalia, glands for producing milk, eggs, a womb. Sendak sucks in a sharp breath, growls so low it's nearly a purr.

"A breeding pair," he says. "Finally. Change of plans, I need you to - "

Haxus nods towards the Castle, where they can just barely see the drone flash a few times, that unpleasant Altean blue, and zip away towards the woods. The little one takes off after it, surprisingly fast on short legs, and the Champion yells some unintelligible slop of human sounds at them once, twice, before following. They're so easy, these humans, it's not even particularly fun.

"Here," he says, pulls up a map and shows it to Sendak. "There's a clearing, good for an ambush. I'll have the drone run them around for a little, wear them out and give us time to get there first."

"Very good," Sendak says, pats Haxus' shoulder as he rises and starts into the forest. When Emperor Zarkon rewards Sendak with whatever glory is surely coming to him for disabling Voltron simply by reducing two of its paladins to breeding slaves, there will be plenty left over for Haxus.


	2. ii: Allura

The party winds down, as parties do; Arusians are apparently happy to sleep anywhere, and the ballroom floor is littered with their tiny bodies, sound asleep and snoring. Allura dims the lights so as not to disturb their rest, leaves Coran to whatever cleanup he'll refuse to leave until morning, and goes off to find Pidge. She won't be able to sleep if she doesn't clear everything up.

Most of the paladins are in the lounge, listening to Earth music from a small rectangle on the table that's otherwise completely covered with plates of snacks from the party and enough half-empty cups for several full paladin teams.

"Have any of you seen Pidge?"

"I saw him dumping platters of hors d'oeuvres into his backpack," Hunk says; Allura's still working on learning human body language but it seems as if he might be bragging, almost, proud of Pidge for some reason. "But not since then."

"He was with Shiro, last I saw," Keith says.

"Do you know where Shiro is, then?"

Keith frowns, tilts his head back and forth, furrows his brow a little. "Nope."

"They probably both stood guard for half an hour and then snuck to bed early," Lance says.

"That kind of sounds like Pidge," Hunk agrees.

"Neither of their rooms are occupied," Allura says.

"Okay," Hunk says, "then Pidge is probably in the lab and Shiro's down in the training deck getting even bigger for some reason."

"He works out when he can't sleep," Keith says. "Why do you need him?"

"Not him," Allura says, "Pidge. He said something to me about leaving the team, and I haven't seen him since. I'm concerned, I may have offended him and I'd hate if he put himself in danger because of it."

"Oh," Keith says. “If Pidge went and told Shiro he wanted to leave, Shiro probably took him on some life lesson learning experience thing. He lives for that shit. They're out in the woods talking about survival or checking out an old battlefield so he can lecture Pidge about putting the war first or hanging out with Arusian war orphans or something. They'll be back in the morning."

"I'm not sure it's safe for them to be out on their own," Allura says, and frowns. What she wouldn't give for a group of paladins who consulted with each other before making foolish decisions, at the very least.

"It's Shiro," Lance says. "They'll be fine."

"If they're not back in the morning, we can look for them," Keith says, gentle, the kind of gentle that makes Allura want to snap at him. How dare he try and soothe her when she's perfectly calm.

Allura sighs, shakes her head a little. It's been a long night and all of a sudden she's so exhausted standing feels like a chore. The paladins know Shiro and Pidge better than she does, and she's not any more familiar with Arus and any lurking danger than they are and if they're so certain, she has no reason to doubt. It's late, and Allura's tired of talking to people who don't understand her.

"Alright," she says, and dips into a short bow before she leaves them for the haven of her bedroom.


	3. One

When Shiro opens his eyes, the realization that he must have been dreaming hits him almost immediately. A long, complicated dream, that indicates the kind of deep rest he hasn't had since Kerberos, but still a dream. Because when he opens his eyes he's clad in a bodysuit and loose overshirt, the air's too cold, the room stinks like Galra, and the pile of rough blankets underneath him do nothing to warm him or disguise how rough the metal floor underneath is. He must have gone a little too far in the arena, tried to kill someone with an important patron after the call to stop, and they knocked him out. He thought they knew better than that, by now, better than to give him an opponent whose throat he can't tear out.

The body next to him - there's a body next to him? - shivers violently, and Shiro curls his arm around them to pull them closer without really thinking about it. No one here would willingly sleep this close to him, make themselves that vulnerable to the mindless, bloodthirsty killer, unless maybe they're new and doesn't know better yet than to seek out the nearest warm body. Someone small, too, as far as he can tell, so unless they've got some nasty tricks up their sleeve he doubts they'll be around long enough to learn.

Shiro looks down to see a bushy head of hair and amber eyes straight out of his dream, Matt Holt shrunk down to manifest as his sister, the person in the whole universe best at making him feel ashamed for all the ways he's failed since Kerberos. He remembers Matt making it out, though, and he’s taller than this, and - shit. Shit, Shiro hadn't been dreaming, Shiro'd made it out and accidentally brought a bunch of teenagers back with him, right into the line of fire, and now he's been recaptured and got Pidge taken, too. He's _back_ , that's a million times worse than never having escaped at all.

He should let her rest, God knows how much longer they'll be left alone or how much sleep they'll be able to get in the foreseeable future, but he doesn't remember their capture and the Galra are rough and Pidge is a scrapper and she might be hurt. Shiro tries to be careful, but of course she wakes up when he's pawing all over her feeling for breaks.

"Ow," Pidge says, thick and groggy.

"That hurts?" Shiro asks, presses the spot on her hip again.

"Little bit," Pidge says.

“Anything else hurt?”

Pidge shakes her head and pushes her face into Shiro's side like she's trying to find an opening, use him like a sleeping bag. "Cold."

"Yeah," Shiro says. "You know where we are?"

"Somewhere cold."

Shiro smiles, despite himself, despite the danger they're in. "We're in a Galra prison cell. I don't remember what happened, but - "

"Rover," Pidge says, and sits up. No wincing, so hopefully she's just a little banged up. "Rover freaked out and ran off, and I went after him, they must have - oh God," she says. "I brought a Galra drone into the Castle when I barely understand their tech, of course, what if they were watching the whole time?"

"You've been poking at him since you got him, I'm sure you would have noticed if he were actively broadcasting. Probably someone got in range and just seized an opportunity. It's not your fault." Shiro sits up himself, muscles more stiff and sore than they should be from just one night sleeping on a shitty floor. So either they put up a good fight, or they've been out for much longer than eight or so hours.

Pidge doesn't look convinced, but she doesn't argue, and when she shivers again she scoots closer and huddles up against him for warmth. She'll adjust, he hopes; the Galra are surprisingly interested in learning all they can about other species, but not so far as to ever adjust the climate control anywhere on a ship for anyone but themselves. 

"I was only ever in the one prison," Shiro says, "the arena. These are the same uniforms they had us in there, but I don't know if it's because that's where we are or the uniforms are the same everywhere. If it's the arena, it's Sendak, which is either very good or very, very bad."

"Why?"

"He always liked me," Shiro says, the admission making his skin feel too small, tight and itchy. _I kind of liked him, too_ isn't necessary or important or maybe even true but it sits heavy and sour on his tongue. "So he'll either be happy to have his Champion back, or want to punish me even harder for escaping when he was trying to be _nice_ to me."

"Ew," Pidge says, but doesn't bother with soothing or pitying him, and Shiro's grateful. "Okay. So tell me what to expect, when they make me fight."

"Expect me to get a weapon and fuck up your leg," Shiro says, only half-joking. Or not joking at all, maybe. If Pidge has to be a Galra prisoner, at least getting sent to a work camp would keep her alive, maybe make it easier to find her father and brother. Or engineer a revolt, that seems like something she'd do.

"Don't be stupid," she says. "Two of us here is better than one, you wouldn't split us up and halve our chances of getting out."

"Sometimes they won't give the new prisoners any weapons," Shiro says. "Sometimes the crowd's just hungry for blood and the best way to make them happy is to throw a few waves of unarmed, underfed, terrified bodies at the current favorite brute. I might - I've been that brute, before. I could have to do it again, or they might make us fight each other. And maybe we could find a way out of that but they don't always - they've drugged me, before. I couldn't remember the fights when they did that, but sometimes it would take hours to wash off all the blood. I've survived before, I can do it again. Let me get you out of here."

"No," Pidge says, and then there's no more time to argue because there are footsteps approaching. Shiro recognizes the figure who appears at their cell door, a little, almost, fuzzy images of his face during a struggle before he pressed a cloth to Shiro's mouth and Shiro stopped seeing anything at all.

"On your feet," he says, and though it takes them a few seconds to disentangle and actually manage to balance on sore, stiff legs, he doesn't rush them. "Forward."

Shiro knows this part, steps forward and turns his back to the bars. Sendak likes when he's chained from behind, chest pushed out, easy to knock over, easy to make him arch his back when - just easier. Maybe it's presumptuous, maybe he'll look too eager to find himself back on Sendak's good side. Maybe Sendak would prefer him chained in front just so he can be the one to change Shiro's position, some reason to touch him and make his skin crawl. Either way, it's too late; Pidge moves next to him, turns her back as well, quick to follow his lead, and Shiro feels his arm go heavy the way it does when they disable it, and the cuffs clicking shut around his wrists.

The door opens, the guard grabs them by their collars and pulls them into the hallway so roughly Pidge slams into Shiro and nearly falls over, and before she's fully recovered her balance he shoves them down the hall until they get the message and walk on their own. He's testing them, if Pidge is as weak as her size might indicate, if Shiro can tolerate seeing her treated roughly. Maybe he could snap at the guard now, put on a little show of protection, convince him it won't take much hurting Pidge to get a reaction out of Shiro, but if he's back in the arena there'll be no shortage of people who know just how hard he is to break. His only real hope there is to be compliant enough they won't feel the need to torture Pidge to earn his cooperation. 

Doesn't mean they won't torture her just for fun, though, or won't do it the other way around, make Pidge watch all the things Shiro might still be used to, still have a tolerance for, make him watch Pidge break long before he's near his own limit.

Shiro's more and more sure of where he is as they walk, as the cells give way to the filthy, stinking locker rooms, always caked in blood and grime and God only knows what else. At least no one's dragged themselves down here to die after refusing medical attention, not right this minute. The guard must be marching them through the backstage to keep them hidden; next is the infirmary, which is also mostly empty, with nobody screaming. It must be around midday, hours since the last match, hours before the next one. The big common room where well-behaved fighters are allowed to gather during the day - and where they wait for their turn when the matches begin at night - is full, and Shiro ducks his head, looks away. He doesn't need any of them to recognize him, not yet, doesn't need to see what sort of reaction his return might inspire, doesn't need Pidge to see how disgusted and afraid they all are in his presence.

She'll know soon enough.

Up and up they go, through hallways lined with nicer chambers for fighters who've earned wealthy patrons, and whose patrons might want to show them off or enjoy their...company somewhere nicer than the cells, through empty hallways leading around the upper-tier seats, to, finally, Sendak's quarters. It's too - he'd gotten away, he wasn't supposed to - hands all over him, praise turning his head, all the parts of himself he hated but it felt so good to hear it, what a monster he was, what a monster Sendak made him, in the arena, in this room, every part of him - 

Pidge stumbles and bumps into him, but doesn't straighten back up, leans just enough of her weight against him he's pretty sure she won't fall if he gets pushed forward. He's not breathing right, he has to breathe, can't hyperventilate and black out on Sendak's floor, can't leave her alone with him.

The doors swing open; Sendak's body fills the entire frame. His cyborg arm is new, even bigger than the last one, and he's abandoned all pretense that the hand is for anything but capturing, injuring, killing. He used to have blunter fingers, liked to use that hand to - it used to be different. Shiro clings to that, desperate like a drowning man; something has changed, time has passed. He got away. He can get away again.

"Champion," he says in that low growl that usually meant he was pleased with Shiro, that a - that a reward was coming. Shiro's stomach twists in on itself. "How nice of you to return to us."

"Let her go," he says, through the tight clench of his stomach, the pressure in his lungs, lump in his throat. Pidge will be furious with him, especially if it works, but he'll take 'furious and not here' over pretty much anything else. "You have your trophy fighter back, you don't need her."

Sendak laughs, loud and booming and _wrong_ in a way that sends chills down Shiro's spine. He used to know the rules here, the rhythm, how to keep Sendak happy and when to piss him off and how to survive. Maybe it'll come back to him, or maybe he'll learn it all over from the beginning. Or maybe he'll die, this time, before that happens. Maybe Pidge will learn the game better than he ever did, save them both.

"Oh, I think I do," he says, grins down at them, all sharp teeth and glinting eyes, the wolf about to strike. "I didn't bring you back to fight for me, little Champion, I brought you here to _breed_."

*

The room they led Pidge to after Shiro started screaming - and thrashing, and she thinks he might have dislocated his shoulder trying to get free of his cuffs - is really nice. Not austere like the few Galra ships she's been inside, and a different kind of luxurious than the Castle of Lions, all plush fabrics, rich carpet, every piece of furniture in the room designed for reclining. There's a fireplace Pidge might be dying to play around with any other time, figure out the logistics and what sort of false fire it created and maybe even the _why_. But Pidge can't think about all the tech at her fingertips, because if Pidge thinks about anything but the next several digits of Pi she's going to start crying, or screaming, and whichever one it is she might not be able to stop.

The guard - not a guard, a high-ranking officer, Sendak's trusted right-hand man - wouldn't tell her what was going to happen to Shiro. It won't be good, of course, he attacked Sendak, but it'd still be better to know. Even better to have Shiro right here with her, because she needs a do-over on her 'tell me what to expect'.

The door swings open to admit the lieutenant, and Pidge freezes. He probably expects something, for her to snap to attention or cower or - she should have asked that, too, what she's supposed to do to avoid accidentally disrespecting the wrong person. She can ask him later. She can ask him everything later.

"You will read these," he says, hands her a datapad and a stylus, "and note down everything that went wrong in previous human breeding attempts, to the best of your knowledge, in as much detail as possible. When you're finished, you will summon me, and if I am satisfied I will bring you a hot meal, and you will be allowed to enjoy it and the bathing facilities before I escort you back to your cell."

She could tell him she can’t read without her glasses, that he broke them and it’s his own fault she can’t help, but that’s probably a really good way to get hurt. Do Galra even have bad eyesight, as a concept?

"Okay," Pidge says. "I mean - yes. Yes, sir. But will you please - "

"I will bring your notes to the researchers Sendak has chosen for this project after I have brought you your dinner. If they agree your work is satisfactory, I will tell you the status of your companion. Whether or not you will be allowed to see each other tonight, or again at all, depends as much on his behavior as yours."

"I - yes," Pidge says. "Okay. Sir."

The lieutenant nods, and leaves without another word. Pidge closes her eyes and takes a deep breath; it doesn't help, and she sighs. 

"Okay, Mom," she says, to the empty room, as she opens the first folder, a case nearly a hundred years old. "Let's hope I listened to all your gross work stories better than I thought I did."

*

Shiro doesn't know when they release him, only that it's late enough the matches have ended for the night. The hallways he passed through with Pidge earlier are dirtier now, walls streaked with blood and viscera, more and more and more until they get to the infirmary where some bodies have just been left where they fell. A couple drones are already cleaning it up; the stink of guts and antiseptic is almost worse than the thick choke of the blood on its own. There's screaming, most likely from the exam rooms, loud enough to be heard this far away through any number of closed doors. Some of them will die tonight; some will get a few nights' reprieve. Some will be back on their feet tomorrow, unsteady and distracted by the pain, a sure loss.

There's a body in the locker room, something big and hulking. It's always the massive ones who laugh off their wounds and die down here.

To Shiro's surprise - relief, to his impossible relief so intense he nearly laughs - the guards lead him to the same cell he woke up in. Pidge is already asleep, curled up on her side with a scratchy blanket bunched under her head for a pillow. She's shivering in her sleep, so much he can see her shake from outside the cell. Maybe Shiro can convince them she'll need to stay somewhere warmer, that humans can't conceive if they get too cold. Leveraging Pidge's fertility for privileges feels a little too much like giving in, though, like accepting this is going to happen.

The guard uncuffs him and shoves him inside so hard he stumbles, almost falls over right on Pidge. What kind of punishment would accidentally killing half the breeding pair get, Shiro wonders. The door slams shut and locks behind him; the guard must be halfway down the hall when Shiro's arm comes back to life. Shit, that hurts. Not as much as - not the worst he's felt all night, but still.

He settles down behind Pidge, curls close and wraps his arms around her to give her as much body heat as he can.

"You okay?" she asks; she sounds more awake than she should if she'd actually been sleeping. He'll have to be more careful about getting separated, so he can keep an eye on her, make sure she sleeps and eats and keeps her strength up.

"Fine," he says, a lie and they both know it, but she doesn't push and he doesn't talk and sleep claims them both soon enough.

*

Pidge doesn't really know, because obviously she's never been through anything like this, but she's pretty sure if they just got to the torture and stopped fucking around it might actually be better. She can't check out and go hide somewhere in the depths of her mind when they keep asking her questions, hooking her up to medical equipment, scanning and poking and prodding and asking even more questions. 

"The cycle is roughly twenty-eight quintants," Pidge says, for maybe the tenth time. "Most of it is the body preparing for pregnancy, and then flushing out the extra tissue created, with a window of high fertility in between."

"And the gestational period is - "

"Nine phoebs."

The researcher sighs, frustrated, and notes it down even though it's the tenth time Pidge has told her that, too.

"How many in a litter?"

"Um," Pidge says. "We don't really - just one. Sometimes two."

She throws her hands up, lets the datapad fall to the table. "There's no way we're going to get the results Sendak wants, it's a wonder they've even survived as a species."

"But they've proven remarkably susceptible to DNA manipulation and other modifications. It will be a challenge, but you're welcome to excuse yourself and leave me to it," says the other researcher. Pidge kind of wishes she'd asked their names, but they don't listen to anything she says unless it's an answer to a direct question so they wouldn't have told her anyway. 

"And let you claim all the glory? Never," she says. "I just wish we had more than one subject."

"We just can’t get sloppy," the other one says, moves around Pidge's exam bed to pat the researcher's shoulder. "Maybe once she's served her purpose, Sendak will release her to us, and you can make all the mess you want."

Pidge doesn't react. Pidge doesn't gasp, or cower, or let any of the fear rising up in her make her do anything at all. Moving or screaming or trying to break free will look like struggling, and struggling will get her hurt. Pidge is calm. Pidge is handling this. Pidge is going to come out on the other side of this stronger and better and more proud of herself than she is traumatized. 

"That would be nice," the researcher says, almost wistful. Before she can say anything else about how much she wants to cut Pidge into tiny pieces while probably keeping her alive the whole time, she's interrupted by several low beeps. The nodes stuck to Pidge's skin in a hundred different places make a soft hiss, and detach themselves. The scans must be finished.

"Take her back to her cell," the researcher says, without looking at her. When they brought both her and Shiro up to the labs for examination, she'd kind of assumed they'd be together, or at least get to leave together so she doesn't have to be alone when there's no one observing and she can't convince herself not to be terrified, but she knows better than to ask if he's already there, if he'll be done soon, if this is when they separate them until it's time to...breed. She just slides off the table, tugs the baggy shirt on over the bodysuit they'd thankfully left on during the scans, and turns to present her arms for cuffing.

*

The more they treat Shiro like he's any other prisoner here, just a body to throw at other bodies for the entertainment of others, the more settled he feels. He knows, from the brief time he was out and had time and space to start processing what he could remember, that taking any comfort in knowing how to survive and being willing to do so is going to make him miserable down the line, but he doesn't have the luxury to worry about it. Pidge is safe in their cell, so Shiro doesn't let worrying about her distract him. Distractions get you killed.

Shiro bounces from foot to foot, rolls his shoulders, loosens himself up for combat. He recognizes fewer people here than he expected, but even the strangers seem to know to keep their distance. It gives him room to really stretch out, to run through a few maneuvers without crashing into anyone. His arm is disabled until he steps out into the pit, so he can't do any work with it, but that's fine. He doesn't need the arm so much as he needs the Champion to take over, and as the lights go dim and a guard enters to fetch him, Shiro reaches for him, for the darkness he's stuck carrying around forever, and lets himself fade into the background.

He's pretty lucid for the fight this time, but it all fades so fast he remembers nothing between the last opponent falling to their knees, dead, and blinking back into focus in Sendak's bedroom. He never does, the adrenaline blurs it, keeps him living in that perfect, exquisite moment of triumph for as long as he can. Never, ever long enough. Shiro's already coming down, muscles trembling, body aching from being worked in a way it hasn't for some time now, from every ultimately futile hit he took, blood covering him nearly head-to-toe, breath coming hard and ragged. The skin that gives way to his metal arm is tingling, and his cock is so hard he could probably make himself come in his bodysuit without even touching himself.

"Quite a performance," Sendak says, snaps his fingers and signals to someone over Shiro's shoulder. To Shiro's credit he only jumps a little when whoever it is begins unzipping his suit, warm strong hands dragging the zipper down slow and steady. Of course. He remembers. "And Haxus thought we might need to ease you back in."

"I never doubted him," Haxus says. "I simply suggested you might want to approach your stud differently than you did your champion."

"And when the bitch is ready for her stud, I may do that." Sendak stalks towards him, slow and steady, teeth and eyes glinting wickedly in the low light. Shiro had never felt anything like the scrape of those teeth before; he'd been less relieved than he should have been to realize he'd never feel it again. Maybe. Maybe. "But until then, it's a shame to waste such talent."

Haxus kneels to draw the suit down to Shiro's ankles, coaxes him to step out of it, then rises again and steps away, blood smeared on his sleeves.

"Of course, sir," he says, and drops into a slight bow before leaving them alone.

Sendak waits, just staring at Shiro, chest rising and falling as if his own breath is coming a little heavier. Shiro's starting to come back to himself, to feel the split between himself and the monster, but the Champion's always been proud of the effect he has on Sendak and he stands just a little taller for it. The door slides shut behind Haxus, and Sendak finally moves, a few more slow strides forward until he's standing so close Shiro can feel his body heat. Shiro doesn't moan at the first press of the warm, wet cloth to his chilled, sticky skin, but it's a close thing.

"Tell me about your companion," he says, as he washes Shiro in slow strokes and Shiro tries not to melt into his touch. Once, Sendak's touch repulsed him; he'd thought it might again. Maybe he's lost the part of him good enough for that. This is dangerous territory, and Sendak's counting on that, on Shiro being too adrenaline-high and touch-hungry to be careful what he says.

"What do you want to know?" Careful, careful.

"I recognized something special in you right from the beginning, Champion," he says. Flattery. Dangerous. "Is this woman of your caliber? Or will she pollute the line with mediocrity, diminish your strong genes?"

"No," Shiro says, quick, defensive. _Careful_ , Shiro. She's short, she's not particularly strong, she snores, her eyesight is bad. Too clever for her own good. Stubborn. But what will Sendak do with her if Shiro convinces him she's no good for breeding? "She's more than a match for me."

Shiro's an idiot. She is, but that was the opposite of careful. 

"Good," Sendak says, and focus his attention back on Shiro's body (where it belongs. Where it - what? Shiro shuts his eyes tight, until fireworks burst behind his eyelids. He needs to get out of here). Sendak cleans the blood from Shiro's torso, his opponents' and his own, from his arms, careful attention paid to his hands, cleaning between his fingers and under his nails. Shiro doesn't moan, not until Sendak crushes Shiro's flesh hand with his own, a brutal massage that leaves him feeling instantly better. He hadn't even realized his hand was stiff.

Sendak smirks and moves on, running the cloth over Shiro's buttocks and then between, where there's no blood and they both know it. He teases Shiro, rough cloth and sharp claws and impossible strength in his hand, strokes over his hole and presses against his perineum until Shiro spreads his legs a little, pushes his hips back for more. It's so good; it's been so long. Shiro's cock is leaking so much he can feel it dripping down his balls, onto the floor. Disgusting.

"Eager as ever," Sendak says, slides the cloth forward to wrap it around Shiro's cock. He gasps, and his knees buckle a little; he reaches to balance on Sendak's shoulder before he can stop himself. "Will you be this eager for her?"

Shiro's stomach twists up tight and hot and nauseous, can't - it's _Pidge_ , he can't. But his cock twitches, a little spurt of precome dirties the cloth further, and he - all spread out for him, naked and lovely, tight nipples and pink cunt and flushed all the way from her forehead to her tits with need for him, need to be taken, to be - to be _bred_ \- Shiro might throw up, he's going to throw up, all over Sendak, but Sendak tightens his grip and twists his wrist, almost painful, and Shiro comes instead, gasping and choking.

Sendak laughs, warm and rich, and gets a fresh cloth to wipe Shiro's oversensitive dick clean.

"Maybe we won't need aphrodisiacs after all." He tosses a fresh shirt and bodysuit at Shiro. "If you're not dressed when Haxus gets back," he says, "you can return to your cell naked."

Shiro doesn't ask if there's somewhere else he can sleep tonight; Sendak has no reason to grant him any favors yet, and Pidge doesn't know what he is, yet, who he's in danger of turning into around her, and shouldn't be punished with isolation just because Shiro can't control the monster. He dresses, slow now that the adrenaline and the orgasm are both wearing off, now that he can feel all his injuries for real and it hurts to move in basically every direction. But he's not naked when Haxus shows up to cuff him and disable his arm, and he's mostly pushed the things he let the monster do to the back of his mind when he drops to the ground and curls around Pidge.

He waits until she stops shivering to close his eyes and try to sleep, but he didn't need to bother. Sleep doesn't come to him that night.

*

"They wouldn't tell me where you were," Pidge says. 

"You have to stop asking," Shiro says. "You're giving them a really easy way to mess with your head."

Pidge sighs. She's trying, she really is, she's - they sent her back the the cell just before serving her midday meal yesterday, and Shiro didn't come back until she was already asleep, and she had no idea - they're going to make her do this alone, she knows, as much as they can, she's not stupid enough to think they'll let the two of them have the basic comfort of human company for long. She'll have to get used to it, ready for it. She just hasn't yet.

"Was it weird?" she asks, instead of apologizing or insisting she's doing her best. It doesn't matter. "Being back in the arena?"

"Like I never left," Shiro says, an edge to his voice that makes Pidge's skin crawl a little. When she looks over her shoulder at him, he's leaning back against the coarse metal wall, staring off into space. He looks...small, kind of. Like if they both stood up she’d be the taller one, somehow. She shouldn't make him talk about things. He's got to get himself through as much as she does.

"Sorry," she says, and he turns to look at her, expression softening a little.

"Come here," he says, lifts up his cybernetic arm to give her room to tuck against his side. "I bet you're cold."

"I'm always cold," she says, and scoots back to sit next to him, lean heavy on him. "Is it a prison thing? Keep our morale low, or cold-blooded prisoners weak, or something?"

"I don't think so. Galra, especially the furry ones, just run really hot. It feels a little like they're burning you, when they touch you."

"Honestly, that sounds kind of nice right now," Pidge says, smiles up at him a little.

"I'd rather you don't find out," Shiro says. "So I don't have to tear anyone's hands off with my teeth."

"That would be the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me," Pidge says, "right up to the point where they started beating me to death to get you to stop."

"Not all the way to death," Shiro says, squeezes her shoulder a little. "Too valuable."

Pidge laughs; she shouldn't be, that's not funny, none of this is - but it is. 

"That's fine, then," she says. "Bite whatever you need to."

"Yes, ma'am."

Shiro squeezes her even tighter, almost too tight, pulls her against his side so she almost can't tell where she ends and he begins. She can't stop counting on having him around, because if she thinks about why she needs to, she'll start thinking ahead, to when the Galra have begun "modifying" her, when they're ready to start breaking her, when they'll need to separate her from any support to keep her down. And if she thinks that far ahead, she can't keep from thinking farther, when Shiro's going to - when they make Shiro hurt her. When they turn him into a weapon meant for her instead of nameless hundreds in the fighting pit. When maybe they'll hold a gun to his head or inject him full of drugs or use some freaky Galra mind control but he'll still be Shiro and she'll be -

Something crashes against the cell door, and Pidge jumps. Steps echo down the hallway for miles down here, and she didn't even hear them coming, the guard and two sentries standing at the door scowling.

"On your _feet_ ," says the guard, in the tone of someone who's already given the order once. They run through what's become their one daily routine, rising, walking to the door, turning their backs, being cuffed, and the door unlocking. The guard holds her gun ready, and points them down the hallway in one direction or the other. Today it's back towards the arena, not to the labs.

"What's today's fun activity?" Shiro asks. Sometimes when he does that the guards play along with him; Pidge isn't sure if he's just really that good at making friends, or if it's a tactic on their part. It wouldn't surprise her if there are just guards still here who like him, genuinely enjoy his company.

"Fights," the guard says, low and gruff. "Same as always."

Shiro stops walking; Pidge doesn't know why, but usually following Shiro's lead is smart, so she stops with him. She doesn't whirl around to face the guard when he does, though, that seems...dangerous.

"She doesn't fight," he says.

"I have my orders," she says.

"We knew this might happen," Pidge says. She's less afraid of the pit than she is of a lot of other things.

"Your orders are wrong. Sendak know you're sending her to the pit? That's not what she's here for. She doesn't fight."

The guard sighs, and Pidge does turn around at the sick thud and sound of someone crumpling to the ground. Shiro's clutching his gut, gasping for air. Pidge tries to school her face into a neutral expression; she has no idea if she's successful, but at least she doesn't draw any extra attention from the guard.

"I'll deal with him on my own," the guard says, gestures between the sentries and Pidge. "Escort her to Commander Sendak's box."

"What?" Shiro asks from the floor, a barely audible wheeze. Pidge is going to strangle him if he doesn't learn when to just stop.

"She's not fighting," the guard says, kicks at him a little. "She's watching. Better put on a good show."

"No," Shiro says, struggles to push himself up. He's so upset Pidge's heart starts to race - what does that _mean_ , what happens in Sendak's box, what's so bad he's not pretending nothing shakes him. The guard nods, and the sentries lead her away, so she can't ask, can't try to figure out the look on his face.

"Don't worry, pretty," she hears the guard say, just before they move out of earshot. "I'm sure you're still his favorite."

Pidge is swept through the same corridors as before, the dirty locker room and thankfully quiet infirmary, but the sentries lead her through a door she hadn't seen before and suddenly she's in the arena proper. It's loud, of course it is, thousands of bodies packed close and ready for blood, and it _stinks_ , rotten meat and blood both old and new and humans must not be the only species who evacuate when they die. If it were cold in here like the rest of the ship, it might not be so bad, but the heat of too many bodies hits Pidge like a wall. 

Whatever Shiro's worried about isn't immediately clear; Sendak's box is just a few nice seats, a small bar, a table piled high with snacks. There's a screen in one corner, probably to make up for being so far from the action. It's worse than if there'd been an exam table and a bunch of torture equipment, really; she still has no idea what to expect. What do Galra - what does _Sendak_ \- get like when they're high on blood and rage and other people's victories?

"Ah," Sendak says, when the sentries back out and close the door. "Our guest."

Pidge hates not knowing things, hates it more than anything else, almost more than being locked in a shitty freezing Galra prison cell indefinitely. Shiro never does anything, when he's approached by higher-ups, just stands and makes eye contact and challenges them to make him show respect, but she doesn't know if that's actually what's expected or if she might have better luck showing deference. 

Sendak flicks his wrist, and the tall, skinny lieutenant from the other night approaches Pidge and walks her to the seat next to Sendak's. To her surprise, he uncuffs her before Sendak motions for her to sit. They probably know how little threat she poses without a weapon, makes it easy for them to offer her a little freedom, make her desperate to please them for more. 

"Will we get a good show tonight, Haxus?" 

"We always do," says the lieutenant, from the bar. "A Uozaq, just brought in today. Large, for her kind, it took nearly twenty soldiers to bring her in."

"Excellent," Sendak says, turns to Pidge. "Are you familiar? Six arms, and most of their warriors prefer to wield six weapons to make the most of them. What do you think? Taking the arms off one by one?"

"Some of the cleverer fighters would try for high ground so they can get on her back, take advantage of the blind spot. I expect the Champion will go right for the stomach, though, he won't mind taking the hits and he likes a messy kill so much."

"Taking off six arms would be plenty messy," Pidge says, hopes her voice doesn't make it clear how her stomach is twisting up. Brave face. Like Shiro, challenge them, impress them, don't show intimidation. She can do that, maybe. Or maybe not; Sendak grins at her, and she hates that grin, the way it makes her skin crawl, the way it makes Shiro go unsteady. The joy he takes in - everything, it seems, everything they do, terrifies her.

"So you've seen him in action, then? Not just hidden away in that lion?"

"Of course," Pidge says. She's seen him take down three whole sentry droids in a sterile, bloodless fight that was over before it began. 

"It's quite something," Sendak says. Haxus sets a drink in Pidge's armrest, something shockingly purple, almost the color of quintessence, and hands something darker, thicker, to Sendak. He returns to the bar, and Sendak sits back in his chair, turns his attention to the pit far below them. From this height, Pidge has a hard time seeing them, finds it almost too easy to ignore the brutal reality. It would be easy, the easiest thing in the universe, to detach, ignore it, enjoy a fancy drink and the comfort of a luxury box and the Commander's favor and - no wonder Shiro looks ashamed, sometimes, when she asks about how he survived. It's shameful she's up here when he's down there.

"It's fine to drink," Haxus says, from behind her, too close. Pidge jumps a little, turns to look at him sitting down behind her and Sendak with his own thick, dark drink in hand. "It should be both pleasant and non-deadly."

Is she offending him? Pidge turns forward and picks up her drink, takes a long sip through the metal straw. It tastes like...sugar, mostly. Maybe the scans were so thorough they picked up Pidge's flavor preferences. Or they just think all humans like things this sweet.

"It's good," she says, turns back to smile a little at him. Why is she smiling, why is she reassuring. Why can't Pidge get a grip on herself.

"He's quite a talent," Sendak says. "Perhaps we shouldn't be wasting him on a command post."

It feels like an attack - she’d assume it was an insult if Shiro ever talked to her or any of the paladins like that - but Haxus just laughs. An inside joke, maybe, not a sign of a lieutenant who might turn on his commander, but maybe not. Pidge tucks it away to tell Shiro later and looks back at the fight to see it's ended, one small body on the floor in a pool of thick, dark blood, the other not so much standing triumphant as kneeling in obvious pain. They've only been dragged halfway out of the pit when two more fighters enter and immediately clash weapons. This fight is over even faster, the smaller one slicing the larger clean in half. Pidge sucks on her straw, focuses on the metallic tang against the syrup-sweetness and tries to hold on to her horror at the very idea of what she's watching.

"The Champion is very taken with you," Sendak says; Pidge almost chokes on her drink, but manages to avoid it at the last second. Don't look surprised, don't be surprised by anything, that's probably why she's been brought here on her own. Don't make anything he's said look like a lie. 

"We're fond of each other," she says.

"I'll admit I don't see anything impressive about you," he says, "but if the Champion believes you to be his equal I'm sure I'll get there."

"The scans indicate she's smart," Haxus says. "Very smart."

"More than smart," Pidge says. Like Shiro. Proud, tall, puffed up. Don't be intimidated. "I'm a genius."

Sendak hums, and says nothing more. Pidge's head is swimming; why would she - maybe if he thinks she's useless he'll give up on his breeding program. Or at least on her involvement, and then she might - no. He'd just throw her into the pit if she wasn't a special prisoner anymore. 

There are more and more matches like the first two, quick and violent and decisive. Pidge finishes her drink and Haxus almost immediately gets up to refill it. Another three or four fights. Sendak leans back in his chair and sighs.

"Normally when we have this many new fighters," he says, "we send large groups of them at once against one of our proven fighters. Considerably more entertaining."

"But a little too effective at thinning the herd," Haxus says. "We kept losing them all."

"Still more entertaining."

Haxus sighs. "Would you like me to have them skip to the main event?" 

He doesn't wait for an answer, and Sendak doesn't bother to give one. Pidge tries not to fidget, to play with her straw or pick at the loose threads of her overshirt, to shift in her chair too much. She's - she must be drunk, a little dizzy with it, and she's never, ever going to survive if she keeps being so naive. Like the only concern about accepting a treat from her captors should have been whether it was poisonous or not. Drunk, and anxious, knows how afraid Shiro is of his own memories of the arena, how enthralled with him Sendak is, and whatever she's about to see can't be any good at all.

It's Shiro, though. Whatever else, it's just Shiro. Whatever else, if Shiro got himself out before, then whatever he needs to do, whoever he needs to be, Pidge won't judge him for because it means he'll get her out, too. 

Haxus finishes murmuring into the console on the wall, and the screen in the corner flickers to life before he sits back down.

"Human eyesight isn't as good as Galran," Sendak says, motions to the screen. "And I'd hate for you to miss any of this."

"Thank you," she says, stupidly. When does the rape and torture start? This part is too confusing.

The Uozaq enters first. She's massive, and each of her six arms are nearly as thick around as Shiro himself. She carries six axes, each of them at least as big as a grown man and with twice the wingspan, and there's a long, wicked tail curling around her legs. She could probably just lift Shiro to the ceiling and drop him as easily as slicing him in half with an axe. But Shiro's fought worse and survived. Shiro survives.

Shiro doesn't walk into the arena like the other fighters have, holding their weapons aloft and accepting whatever cheers or boos rain down on them, glorying in the reaction. He charges in, a ball shot from a cannon, like someone had been holding him back while he built momentum and then let him loose. The volume of the crowd rises, rises, nearly doubles from where it had been; they love him. 

He doesn't go right for the stomach, or try to run around and get her from behind. Shiro leaps into the air like he's got his jet pack on, high enough that he can - yeah, high enough he can bring his glowing Galra arm down and slice through a lower arm like it's butter. The sentry droids didn't bleed; the Uozaq does, a lot, a thick blue-black waterfall drenching Shiro as he hits the ground again. The camera zooms in on Shiro's face as he tries to wipe some of the blood off, shakes it out of his hair.

His next target - because he's smarter than Sendak and Haxus - is her tail. She sees him coming the first time and whacks him with it, dead in the stomach, flings him clear across the pit with a thunk Pidge can hear over the crowd. The camera shifts away from him, pans around her as she stalks away, flicks her tail back and forth and rolls her massive shoulders. The bleeding is already slowing, dripping from the giant wound in thick glops.

Pidge slurps down the rest of her drink, stupid as that is; Haxus doesn't move to make her another, this time. Cutting her off, or riveted by the action, who knows.

"There he is," Sendak says, almost growls. His hand finds its way to Pidge's knee and he squeezes, just enough for her to feel how sharp his claws are. Shiro's right, his touch feels like it's burning, like a brand even through the bodysuit. This is what he was worried about, maybe, Pidge drunk and alone with a pair of Galra riled up from a good fight, who could do - who might do anything. 

Shiro's nearly flying around the pit, leaping from obstacle to obstacle, making the Uozaq spin in dizzying circles until she wobbles, and then he strikes. She doesn't stop him this time; his hand glows, and slices through flesh, and her tail drops to the ground, useless. With no hope of recovering her balance, she topples over, so heavy the whole arena shakes. Shiro backs off into a low crouch, watching, waiting.

"He's won," Pidge says. "Why isn't he killing her?"

"Because he's barely had any fun," Haxus says. Sendak squeezes her knee again; Pidge tries not to shiver. It's Shiro, he becomes who he has to, he does what it takes. 

The Uozaq doesn't stay down, of course she doesn't. It takes forever for her to get to her feet, though, missing an arm to hold her considerable weight and her tail for balance. But she rises, and stands, even if her stance is terrible, even if she's several shades paler than she was when she came in. That's a lot of blood to lose.

As soon as she's mostly stable, Shiro moves in. He's - Pidge can't find the words. It's like he's dancing, almost, long, sweeping movements; she can almost hear the music. He gets her to reach for him so he can climb up her arm, and in two swift movements he's dangling from a handhold he punched into her side and another thick arm is on the floor. He avoided the great spurt of blood that time, but he's still filthy with it. The Uozaq spins around, trying to throw him off, and just before she does he lets go and pushes against her to leap to the top of a high column. 

It goes on like that, Shiro's horrible, beautiful ballet; Pidge's breath catches in her chest, heart pounding. The lines of muscle so obvious under his bodysuit, the flash of his eyes, the blood building thicker and thicker all over him as he strikes again and again. The Uozaq turns and turns, swinging her axes in massive, deadly arcs, but can't keep her eyes on him, and every time he strikes another arm falls, another spurt of blood drenches the pit floor. The screaming of the crowd is unbearable. Pidge can't look away.

For a second, just a flash, it looks like Shiro makes a mistake, stays in one place for too long to catch his breath, long enough the Uozaq spots him. She's only got one arm left, the highest one on the right, and she's lost so much blood there's hardly any more coming from the mess of open wounds all over her, but when she sees Shiro she winds up for a mighty swing, and he's got his back to her, why would he - 

Just before the axe slices him cleanly in two, Shiro bolts away. The Uozaq can't stop, too much momentum, and can't keep her balance with so much of her missing. She crashes to the ground again, and this time doesn't get up. The camera zooms in close on Shiro again, stalking around her like a jungle cat, waiting for movement, any excuse to strike again. He's grinning, teeth brilliant white against the blue-black mask of blood on his face, and his eyes are big and bright, wild. Pidge isn't - her whole body tingles. Fight or flight. Or...something even more primal than that. Shiro roars his triumph, loud as the Black Lion, and the bottom drops out of Pidge's stomach. He's - of course he didn't want her to see this.

But she's glad she did. He's - beautiful, her tipsy mind suggests. Breathtaking. His idle threat hours earlier of the violence he'd do to protect her - well. She almost wants an excuse to take him up on it.

Sendak turns away from the pit, towards her, and slides his big paw up her leg. Pidge knew - ugh, she knew it was coming, she was going to - like Shiro, don't react, bear it, but she was distracted and she gasps, jumps a little. Sendak pulls his hand away, to her surprise, and laughs. The laugh is worse than the grin.

"Escort her back to her cell, Haxus," he says, smirking at her. "I'm sure the Champion will want company after a fight like that."

*

Shiro comes to in a healing pod in the infirmary, all the pain of overexertion along with what he suspects was a couple of broken ribs gone. All the adrenaline buzz gone along with it, the power coursing through him and the blurred edges that let him be anywhere else for a few hours. He's not even tired enough to fall into the deep, thick sleep he gets after matches, the only good sleep he can get anymore. It's better when - he'd rather be with Sendak.

Strong reptilian hands help him out of the pod and into his overshirt. The doctor calls a couple sentries to bring him back to the cell, not even a single Galra guard, and they don't bother cuffing him. They know as well as he does the fit he threw earlier, know as well as he does he might as well be bound head-to-toe because he won't do anything risky when for all he knows Pidge is still alone with Sendak.

(Is that why he didn't - )

Shiro doesn't know how long it's been since the match ended, but the pods are quick and Pidge is awake when he gets back to the cell. Awake and there, not with Sendak, and she doesn't look - but there are healing pods, and with the bodysuit he can't tell if there are any marks, and of course with Sendak it's not always about physical wounds. The sentries open the door and he falls more than walks in, shambles forward on his knees so he can start checking her over. He barely hears the sentries leave.

"Are you okay? Did he hurt you, did he - are you hurt?"

Pidge grabs his hands to stop him, and he lets her, lets her tangle her fingers with his and push him back a little. She's stronger than she looks.

"I'm fine, I'm okay," she says. "Stop."

The last time she saw him, assuming they weren't lying about sending her to spectate, he was in a murder fugue, and the first thing he does after getting back is crowd into her space and start grabbing at her? Probably exactly what Sendak wants, too, for Shiro to make her afraid of him so it's worse when they make him - when he has to - 

"Sorry." Shiro tries to let go of her hands and pull away, but she holds on to him, and he doesn't fight her.

"I'm okay," she says again. "He didn't - they didn't do anything, really."

"Really?"

"i don't know," Pidge says, sighs a little. "They were messing with my head. I think I'm drunk."

Shiro almost laughs, but he doesn't want her to think it's at her expense and he bites it back. So worried all night, out of his mind with it, and Sendak's big move was to give a teenager some liquor and do whatever messing with her head means when she's sitting here in no visible distress. Unless the mind games were about making her afraid to be weak in front of Shiro, but he doesn't think she'd be holding his hands if that were the case. Maybe.

"Sorry," he says again. "I don't know what he has in mind for you, but I know what he's done to me."

"I'm not worried about that," Pidge says. "He'll do what he'll do, and I'll get through it however I can. I'm worried about..."

She trails off and looks at the ground, breaks eye contact.

"Me."

"Yeah," she says, still doesn't look at him. "You're the only thing that makes me feel safe."

"I'll keep you safe as long as I can."

"You have to stop saying stuff like that," she says, and looks back up at him, eyes a little wet, cheeks flushed pink from alcohol, or embarrassment, or just the cold. "You can't. They won't stop separating us, you're not going to tear anyone to shreds for getting too close, terrible stuff is going to happen to me. I don't need you to stop it, that's not what I meant."

"I'm really good at threats, though," Shiro says, tries to make his smile look real. "And promises."

"Have sex with me," Pidge says.

Shiro sits back on his heels and lets go of her hands, then, and this time she lets him go. Damp eyes and pink cheeks - she's not just drunk, she's about to cry, he thinks. He relaxed too easily, dismissed what Sendak might have done to her too quickly; what did he _say_?

"What?"

"I don't - that was supposed to be a question." She ducks her face, covers it with her hands, so all he can see is spindly fingers and the wild poof of her hair. Shiro wants to reach back out for her, pull her into a hug, rub her back, be good and kind and supportive, but he's not sure touching her is a good idea, not until he knows where this is coming from. "I haven't, ever."

"I'm sorry," Shiro says. "I'll do everything I can to - "

"I thought," Pidge says, and looks back up at him. Her eyes aren't glassy anymore, her cheeks a little less pink, a stubborn set to her jaw he recognizes too well. "I thought if I could have a normal - not normal, but not - if I could have a first time that wasn't...it might help."

"It might," Shiro says. "Or we might figure out an escape before they make me do anything to you, and you'll hate me for doing it - which would be fair - or yourself for asking."

"It's a risk I'm okay with," she says. "I think. It's okay if you're not, it's not - I don't mean to make you feel like you have to. I don't know. I wasn't going to ask, I just - my head."

"Yeah," Shiro says. A little less worried, now - it's such typical drunk teenager logic it's hard to believe Sendak put the idea in her head. Still possible, he's very good at the psychological warfare, but at least Shiro doesn't feel like he's going to set off some sick hypnosis reaction by touching her or saying the wrong thing. He crawls forward to sit next to her, back against the wall, and when he lifts his arm she scoots over to cuddle up against him. Not as cold as she usually is, good. "It's not a no, right now, it's an 'I'm pretty uncomfortable but I'll give it some real thought.' Okay?"

"It's okay if it's a no, too," she says. "I know it's not fair to ask."

"Fair is a luxury," Shiro says, shifts until he can reach over and grab her legs, swing them over his lap so he's almost cradling her. She squeaks a little, but settles right down against him, so she's probably okay with him being selfish and using her like a teddy bear. "We do what it takes to make sure we both survive, and if sometimes that means one of us has to suck it up and do something shitty, oh well. Once we're out, we can either get past it or we part ways forever."

"I want to go home," she says, quiet and miserable, presses the words into his coarse overshirt. She might be crying for real now, but he doesn't draw attention to it, just reaches for the pile of blankets and gets them wrapped up as best he can.

"I know," he says, and holds her until they both fall asleep.

*

The new room has its own climate control, and a console to set it however they want, and a (sonic) sink and toilet instead of a pair of buckets, and a firm bed with soft sheets and a plush blanket. But they've been stuck inside it for, as far as Pidge can tell based on when meals come, three or four quintants with nothing to do, and she'd trade the comfort in a heartbeat for the cold cell and the sense that things were happening.

"Why haven't they done anything to me yet?" she asks, a stupid, dangerous question, the one that keeps her up at night.

"You said they sounded like they want to change almost everything about human pregnancy," Shiro says. "It's probably taking them a while to figure out all the modification you'll need."

"Okay, and why haven't they made you fight?"

Shiro sighs and drops out of his push-up, sits up to look at her, lying across the bed with her head hanging over the edge. He looks different upside-down. "I don't know, Pidge. Probably to make us anxious."

"It's working."

"I couldn't tell."

Pidge sticks her tongue out at him and he laughs, a real actual laugh. He's done that a few times, the last day or two, and so has she, and maybe being left to die of boredom isn't so bad. They haven't talked about the other night, they don't talk about anything real or scary or impending, and Shiro puts up with it when Pidge whines or starts rambling, and Pidge puts up with his inability to sit still for five minutes. And she mostly controls her urge to bang on the door and start screaming at whoever's in earshot about when the real torture's going to start. Another stupid question.

The wall console beeps, and the door slides open to reveal a Galra guard and two sentries bearing trays. Third meal of the day, eighth since they moved to the nicer room. Two and a half days, that's all. And Pidge had thought three was a low estimate; she's never met a test she can't pass but maybe tests of patience aren't her strong suit.

Either the Galrans figured out the perfect meal for humans and don't see a need to deviate, or just don't do a lot of variety, because it's the same thing as the last eight meals, some kind of heavy grain with a red meat in gravy and something kind of green that mostly feels like opening her mouth while jumping in a pile of leaves in the fall. Tonight it's different, though. Not the food, but the small cup full of pills that comes with it. Shiro has one on his tray, too, but the cups are opaque and she can't tell if he has as many as she does. And she has...a lot.

"What are - "

"Fertility," the guard says. "Take them."

"What if I don't?" she asks. Another stupid question.

"They can be administered intravenously," says the guard. "The doctors would prefer it that way, so they can observe the initial effects."

Pidge glances over at Shiro, who's stood up and taken his tray. He notices her looking, shrugs, and downs his cup of pills with a few swallows from the glass of water they get with meals. They probably need to "fix" less with him than they do with her, and _what_ they might be "fixing" is so much different for him, so safe for him might not mean safe for her...but he's been here before, and she hasn't gone wrong by taking his cues yet, and she definitely doesn't want to spend however long strapped to a table for more examining. 

"Okay," she says, picks up the little cup, pours the pills - ten of them, it turns out - into her hand, and swallows them all at once. It's too many, but it’d serve them right if she choked on them and died right here.

That's the spirit, Pidge.

"You will be fetched in the morning for a physical examination," she says.

"But I've already been - "

"The Commander wishes to personally confirm your fitness for breeding. Following that you will be escorted to the lab for monitoring so the doctors can confirm the drugs are working."

"But - " Pidge doesn't finish. There's no point. And she'd still rather do it this way than have them hook her up to ten separate iv drips, probably. The sentry takes the pill cup, hands her the tray with her rapidly cooling dinner, and the three of them take their leave. Pidge turns to Shiro; there's no color in his face at all, and he looks kind of nauseous.

"Hey," she says, sets her tray down on the foot of the bed and takes the couple steps needed to get a hand on his arm, tug a little bit. "Are you okay? You should sit down."

He turns his head when she speaks but his eyes are so vacant she's not sure he actually sees her. Whatever they gave him must have - why did he just take it, why's she the only one who wasn't sure, why...it doesn't matter. Pidge takes his tray because it looks like he might drop it, and sets it on the bedside table.

"Shiro? If you need to be sick it's okay, I'm not a sympathy puker, you can go ahead."

He shakes his head, and again, and this time when he looks at her he's all the way present. Most of the way.

"You should eat," he says. "We have no idea what those pills might do to you on an empty stomach."

"Are you okay?" she asks again.

"I'll tell you after we eat," he says. "I promise."

Pidge looks him over, still pale, shaky, unsteady in a way she hasn't seen him yet. So far he hasn't really seemed afraid, even when he'd thought Sendak had hurt her, just angry or terrifyingly calm. Pidge isn't sure she can eat, not the way her stomach's flipping over and over itself with growing worry.

"I'll eat if you eat," she says, and for a second, the way Shiro smiles at her, she thinks he might laugh. It's not funny that she wants to look out for him, that she's not the only one who needs protecting, that now that she’s seen him shaken she’s really, really worried about him, but it’s always nice when he laughs, at least a little.

"Of course," he says, instead, and at least he doesn't say it gently, like she needs placating. 

The meat's too rare, the greens too dry and tasteless, and the grain sticks to her gums and the roof of her mouth and her throat. The water pouches on the tray are supposed to last until breakfast but she goes through all but one trying to choke it all down. Shiro barely eats half of his, but she doesn't scold him, just lets him take her tray and set it by the door so neither one of them will be in danger of stepping in a puddle of congealed gravy on their way to the toilet in the night.

"What you said the other night, about how having a good first time might make things easier for you, do you still think that?"

Pidge blinks up at him, still standing by the door, a little less pale and afraid, a little more the Shiro that makes her feel like he really could stop them from hurting her. She figured he was just going to avoid a straight answer until there wasn't any point anymore; she didn't blame him.

"Yeah," she says, "but I also still think it's not necessary to my sanity or survival so I don't want you to feel obligated."

"I know that," he says, and smiles at her, a weird, sad little smile. "A lot of shitty things happened to me here. But the - for me, the problem was hardly ever how bad it was. They made me feel good, and I had to _know_ , and I have to live forever with knowing, the things I'm capable of enjoying, reveling in, craving. I like winning, and I like it better when winning means killing, and I like it even better the more brutal it is. I liked the attention I got - all the attention, even the - I wanted it, and I needed it, and I loved it, a little. More than a little. Sometimes Sendak would just give me this look, and tell me I reminded him of himself, and - it would make me sick, later, when the rush wore off. But it was a rush."

Pidge draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them while he talks; she knew, kind of, or she suspected, especially since she saw him fight, since the one guard taunted him about Sendak's favorites, but hearing it is - something. A lot of something. 

"The worst I ever felt," he says, "or at least the worst that stuck with me without getting warped into something else, was - Sendak isn't going to put you on an exam table and just let the scanners do the work."

"I know that."

"Like livestock," Shiro says; he's not looking at her any more, staring somewhere over her head, into a corner. Maybe he's seeing something there. Maybe he doesn't need to see it. "Or a show dog. Checking for...elegant lines, good breeding. How well you respond to pain, to pleasure. When I won't let people touch me, it's not the stuff later I'm flashing back to, even though there was so much more; it's the way he just pawed at me, and invaded, and the whole time talked to himself about this body that stopped feeling like mine almost as soon as he began."

Shiro takes the few steps back to the bed and sits down on the edge, and she can't read his face at all. It doesn't make her afraid for him, though, or of him, it's just - there's something there she can't parse and she hates not knowing.

"This might not be a good idea," he says. "But I don't want the first time someone touches you that way to be...that. I want to do this for you."

Pidge bites her lip and looks at him then, really looks at him, the sharp line of his jaw and the fullness of his lips and the warmth in his eyes even now, broad shoulders and thick arms and the organic hand and the cybernetic one and all of him grasping for anything, at all, he can do to keep her safe. 

"I - please," she says. "Thank you." 

Pidge pulls off her overshirt and stands, turns her back to him so he can unzip her bodysuit. He lifts his hands to the zipper and hesitates.

"You don't need to - if you'd rather keep your clothes on," he says, sounds almost shy. Maybe. But no, she has to - she's going to give Shiro everything Sendak thinks is his to take. This first terrifying reveal, these first few seconds of standing naked in front of someone else and anticipating, they have to be Shiro's, because Sendak wants her terrified and Shiro doesn't. She shakes her head; he gets it, doesn't make her say it. The air is a little cold on her skin as Shiro draws the zipper down slowly, steadily, but his hands - both of them - are warm when he pushes the fabric apart and spreads his palms over her shoulder blades. He pushes it over her shoulders so she can pull it down in the front, while his hands slide down her back and make her shiver.

"Cold?" he asks, close enough his breath tickles her shoulder before he brushes his lips over it, dry and chapped, such a light kiss it tickles more than anything.

"No," Pidge says; she is, a little bit, nipples tightening against it as she pulls the suit down, but it's a good chill, the weird sort of _I'm not supposed to be naked in here but I am_ freeing kind of cold. "I'm just..."

She doesn't know what to say next. Nervous, maybe, anxious, but those aren't quite right. A little turned on already, Shiro's gorgeous and she's about to - his hands are strong. Not afraid, not at all, even though she can't exactly forget the circumstances surrounding the whole thing. She's just...she's just.

"Okay," he says, and takes over undressing her once she’s pushed the suit to her waist, slips it the rest of the way down so she can step out of it. It's a little weird to have her ass right in his face when he bends forward, and she hasn't - oh, she hasn't had a shower since they got here. Well. He knows that. "Are you one of those short people who doesn't like to be called cute?"

"No," Pidge says, and he kisses her lower back.

"Good," he says, slips his hands up and squeezes. "You've got a cute ass."

"Thank - thank you?" she says; he laughs, and wraps his hands around her waist. With his thumbs touching the small of her back, his middle fingers almost meet in the front. She doesn't - she usually doesn't like feeling small, but her heart's beating a little faster and her face is heating up. Shiro tightens his grip and pulls her backwards, just enough she loses her balance and lands on the bed between his legs. As she's about to lean back against his chest, the broad, warm, comforting solidity of him, he scoots back on the bed and pulls her with him, all the way to the headboard so he can sit against it and she can sit against him.

His fingers trail over her, light touches on her skin, the rough canvas of his overshirt and soft fabric of his bodysuit making it super obvious just how naked she is and he isn't. Her skin forms little trails of goosebumps in the wake of his fingers, the organic ones rough and calloused, the cybernetic ones impossibly smooth. It's that hand she watches, in lip-biting anticipation, as it draws circles around her chest, spiraling closer and closer to her tight pink nipple. His thumb brushes over it, so light if she didn't gasp and jolt like it was an electric shock even before her brain caught up to the sensation she might have imagined it.

"You like this hand, don't you?" Shiro asks, pinches her nipple between thumb and forefinger so, so gently. Pidge tries to push into it, get a little more, or maybe it's too much and she needs to pull away - he just laughs again, a little, at the way she squirms. She likes when he laughs. "I don't always know its own strength, so you have to tell me if I get too rough."

"I - yeah," Pidge says. "If." Big talk from someone who just jumped a foot in the air from a light, teasing touch. But it gets Shiro to pinch a little harder, that _more_ she wanted, so it's good, it's good, good big talk.

Shiro runs his other hand down her side, pausing for just a second when he hits the ticklish spot on her ribs and she pulls away from it, like he's making a note, down her side and over her hip and under her thigh, those calloused fingers so close, so so close - but he just wraps his hand around her thigh and pulls it to the side, hooks her leg over his to spread her nice and open for him. 

"The obvious thing," Shiro says, his voice a little bit low, a little bit rumblier than usual, "is to try and find somewhere happy to go, close your eyes and ignore what's happening and think happy things. That doesn't really work."

What extremely sexy dirty talk. He's rolling her nipple between his fingers now, tugging a little, and it's still too-much-not-enough, and his fingers are petting at the crease of her thigh, and it doesn't really matter what he's saying even a little bit.

"You go where you feel strong, powerful," he says. "Because it doesn't matter if something bad gets in if you know you can handle it."

"Flying," Pidge says, without thinking about it, thinking more about how he won't just _touch_ her. She lifts her other leg to hook over Shiro's, spread wide over his lap, as exposed for him as she can possibly be. Pidge is supposed to feel vulnerable now, maybe, but between Shiro's hands on her, body surrounding hers, so much of his attention, she mostly just feels _good_.

"Yeah?" he says, and finally moves his hand...away. Pidge whines a little, tries to push her hips forward but she gave up her leverage in favor of feeling his broad thighs under hers. "I thought so. Me, too."

Like with everything else - and she can't quite tell if he's being careful, or just teasing - when Shiro cups her cunt in his big, warm hand he's so gentle it's almost like he's not even touching her. When he presses down to get a real feel of her, for the first time she can tell just how wet she's gotten, sticky against his palm. He almost purrs, low quiet groan, rocks his hand over her until she's squirming, until his palm starts slipping from the wetness of her. There's a callous at the base of his hand, right over her clit, and it's just a little too rough, just a little too good. Pidge whines, and she can almost _hear_ him smiling.

"Do you think the best part is taking off?" he asks. His hand pulls away, so she can't do her best to grind against him anymore, and she almost growls with frustration, thinks about turning her head and biting him until he gives her everything she wants. He's not gone for long, though, switching his whole hand out for two big fingers that press down against her clit and rub in slow circles until she can't keep her hips still. "I do, sometimes. All that anticipation waiting for clearance, and then that moment when the ground drops out from under you and you're flying away from all of it, from everything."

The bottom drops out of Pidge's stomach everytime Green launches out of the hangar, drops like it's doing now with Shiro working her oversensitive nipple and her clit in perfect sync, pressure and rhythm and the heat of his hands, even his cybernetic one, all the same and all too much. Just when she's about to tell him that, not sure whether it'd be to get him to back off or give her more, his fingers slip away from her clit, down to play with her a little more, dipping between her lips and teasing over her hole and coating his fingers with her, spreading it around. Wherever his fingers go, cool air follows, colder for the contrast, like a second set of fingers touching her. 

"But I think maybe you like the main event best," he says, and pushes one of those stupid perfect thick rough fingers inside her, _inside_ her. Her body opens for him, hardly any stretch as he pushes in past the first knuckle, second, all the way. Pidge still doesn't have any leverage, still spread too stupidly wide, thighs starting to ache, for that, but he doesn't _move_ and she wants, she wants, she needs. "Oh, yeah, you just pulled me right in. This what you need?"

"Yeah," she says, more a gasp than anything, as he starts to thrust just the tiniest bit, a millimeter out and back in, the worst tease yet, barely a hint of what she wants. She's not - it's too much, now, this time, to beg him for it, tell him, but this _is_ the best part, or will be, the thick slow push of something inside her, just enough texture to catch a little rough and make her feel every second of the drag in and out, clit hard and needy and aching as long as she can stand to hold off making herself come. "Yeah, yes."

"More?" he asks. "Of course you want more. You don't satisfy easy, do you?"

Pidge doesn't know if that's a compliment but he pulls his finger out and pushes back in with two, thick and perfect, a little bigger than her precious vibrator (lost to the Arusian woods or sitting in Galra custody with the rest of the stuff from her backpack), a stretch that makes her breath catch a little. She reaches up for him, up over her head to curl her arm around the back of his neck and hold on, and he twists and curls his fingers good enough to make her hips jump. He lets go of her nipple, finally (sadly?), so he can rest his cybernetic hand warm and steadying over her sharp hipbones.

"That's the part you like, isn't it." Shiro begins to fuck her, finally finally, a little too slow, too steady, but he pushes in so deep, deeper than she'd expect from just fingers, pushes in deep and twists and curls and his callouses catch when he slides his fingers out and Pidge is melting. "Not just flying, the pushing. Make your lion give you more, make the sky give you more, more speed, more to look at, more data you can pretend to pay attention to later while you think about the thrill of collecting it."

Pushing down her shorts and spreading her legs and fucking herself on her well-loved little cock because she's been squirming since Green went shooting up into space, and she doesn't think he's seen her, knows he hasn't, but oh what if he did, what if he had, standing in the doorway watching her lose her mind, and that's how he's fucking her so beautifully right now, he's seen, he _knows_. Pidge isn't noisy when she jerks off but she can't help it for Shiro, whimpering every time the rough pads of his fingers curl over just the right spot inside her or he grinds in a little on every thrust, trying to push more of him inside her. More of him, yes, please.

"What do you like better?" Shiro asks, and starts fucking her faster, not as deep but hard enough to make her bounce a little, the sound of his fingers inside her dripping cunt thick and filthy and suddenly so loud. She lifts her other arm around the back of his neck, too, letting him take all of her weight on his broad shoulders and thick thighs, and it lets her take him a little deeper, makes her bounce a little more on every thrust. "Speed, or precision?"

Pidge tries to answer, not entirely sure what he means or what he wants but she'll give him anything he asks for when he's making her feel this good, but before she can gasp some half-coherent nonsense out she realizes he's slipping his other hand, the cybernetic one, the - oh she wants that hand on her so badly, so badly, and he knows because he's taking his sweet fucking time sliding it from hip to waist to brush through her pubes until he reaches his destination. She liked his rough fingers but the smoothness of the metal and the relative coolness now that she's an overheated mess are pretty fucking incredible on her clit, especially once they start - oh fuck, oh shit - vibrating.

"Yeah," he says, like she'd answered him, like he liked her answer. Pidge tosses her head back, whimpering even as she tries to make her mouth move and actual words come out, tries to tell him how good it is, right there, just like that. Obviously he gets it, though, fucks her so perfectly at this punishing new pace and curls his stupid perfect vibrating fingers so her clit is just surrounded. Not quite the way she'd touch herself, not the speed or intensity or placement but it's good, it's so good, better, perfect. "You're gorgeous, Pidge, I almost don't want to make you come."

This time she does bite him, turns her head wildly and nips at the first part of him she can reach, and he laughs and twists his fingers, pulls out a little bit to curl up and stroke her just, just right, too right, too intense, please. She does feel like she's flying, floating at least, nothing connecting her to the ground but Shiro and who's to say there's anything connecting him? She's gonna come, oh, she's gonna come with someone else, for someone else, with someone else inside her, with _Shiro_ , and - _oh_.

Shiro fucks her through it, doesn't stop his fingers vibrating until she's shaking and gasping and trying really, really hard not to go too limp and just hang off him like dead weight. She's not succeeding, but she's trying. 

"Holy shit," she says, hoarse, and he laughs.

"Good?"

"Obviously," she says. Pidge gasps a little when he slides his fingers out, clenching up a little to keep him inside. She's distracted from the emptiness by the truly ridiculous mess on his fingers, though, and distracted from that when he lifts his hand to his mouth and sucks them clean. Pidge lowers her arms, stiffer than they should be, so she can lean away a little, turn around and really look at him for the first time since she turned her back so he could undress her. She's starting to feel it now, in the aftermath, the vulnerability, naked and gasping in his arms.

His lips are pink, and shiny, and the way his eyelids lower while he tastes her makes her stomach twist up tight.

"Can I, um," she says, suddenly shy, a weird question to ask now. "Can I kiss you?"

Shiro doesn't answer her, but he slips his fingers out of his mouth and curls them under her chin, tilts her head up so he can press his soft, sticky lips to hers. He kisses her slow and sweet, a contrast to the way he'd been fucking her that makes Pidge's skin prickle with goosebumps, and he tastes like - Pidge shivers a little, and she can feel the soft curve of his smile.

His hands slip down her arms, her sides, roaming over her skin again like when he was first figuring out where to touch her to devastate her most, down her chest and over her hips and to the outsides of her thighs so he can readjust her, pull her legs in so she's back to sitting on the bed cradled between his thighs. She's going to be sore in the morning.

"Okay?" Shiro asks, when he pulls back, warm gray eyes searching her face. "I hope it helps."

"It's helping right now," Pidge says, laughs a little, a little giddy, a little too big for her skin; if Shiro could get her to an exit right now she'd be able to propel herself back to the Castle, probably. "I - it was good, Shiro."

"Good," he says. "It's been a while for me, with a woman especially."

"Well, I don't have a lot to compare it to," she says. "Maybe you were awful."

"Hmm," he says, and kisses her again. "Let me up, I'll get your suit."

Pidge can't think of anything she wants less right now than to be away from him, and that includes all the nebulous terrifying possibilities of the next day and all the days after until they come up with a way out. Shiro makes her feel safe, she keeps telling him, but he just cracked her open and she needs to be a lot, lot closer than usual for that to be true.

"No," she says, and he smiles, wraps his arms tight around her, and lays them down so they can try and get some sleep. Tomorrow's a big day.

*

Shiro doesn't see Pidge again for...a while. He's awake and she's still asleep when they come to take her in the morning, don't even bring her breakfast. Shiro almost thinks they're going to march her to Sendak's quarters naked, the guard tapping her foot impatiently while Pidge wiggles into her bodysuit, arms crossed and shoulders tense. Sendak's possessive, they're probably not supposed to - it doesn't matter. Not like either of them could change it if they wanted to, and Shiro certainly doesn't.

"You'll be fighting tonight," the guard says, once Pidge is ready and she's let a sentry hand over Shiro's breakfast. "Keep your strength up."

He could swear she winks, but can't figure out _why_ he thinks that when she's got her helmet on. He's still frowning when they drag Pidge out and shut the door, leaving him alone. There's a pill cup on the tray again; either they care less that he takes his than Pidge takes hers, or he's been such a good boy they don't think they have to supervise. He could flush them, even if they check his blood levels later they won't strap him down if it's too close to the fights. But flushing them after he encouraged Pidge to take hers yesterday by example feels kind of shitty.

Besides, he recognizes a couple of them from the cocktail they'd give him if he wasn't entertaining enough in the arena, and those always - he always felt so good, after that. And the better he does, the more they love him, the more room he has to ask for favors like a room Pidge won't freeze in or better food, maybe.

But mostly he's going to sit here all day thinking about Pidge, and whether Sendak's trying to break her with cruelty or kindness, and whether he'll laugh at her when it hurts. Whether she's closing her eyes and thinking of flying and barely feeling it. What Sendak's willing to accept as her limits when he doesn't need her strong enough to fight at the end of the day. He might as well be a little fuzzy and out of it 

Of all the things he's forgotten about the last year, it'd be kind of nice if all the excuses he used to make hadn't come back so easily. He didn't get Shiro back long enough, it's too hard to remember to be him and not the Champion, even - especially - when he still can't remember just how bad the Champion was. 

Pills swallowed, food eaten, Shiro goes back to the crunches he'd started his morning with. Maybe he can distract himself from Pidge by trying to remember something, anything, that might help. Just repeating "I got out once, I can get out again," to himself hasn't been especially useful.

Nothing comes to him, not when he can feel his body heat rising, face flushing red, heartbeat speeding up, every single thing about his body intensifying. He tries not to let his brain go fuzzy and unfocused the way the drugs want him to, because as soon as he stops focusing he thinks about Sendak's hands, how big even his unmodified one is, big enough to make Shiro feel almost small, big and cruel. His claws retract but Galran healing is so advanced he only bothers when he wants to, likes the blood and the pain and leaving his mark. Loved it when he could hurt Shiro enough to get a reaction out of his battle-hardened Champion, loved standing over the doctor's shoulder later and instructing him which marks to heal and which to let scar. 

It won't take as much to get the same reactions from Pidge; she's got a core of pure iron and Shiro knows if they think she'll break easy they're wrong, but she's not used to pain. Sendak likes the psychological games, too, enjoys the challenge of breaking someone with a gentle touch and soft, encouraging words, and maybe Pidge's big doe eyes and weakness for showing off how impossibly smart she is will make that interesting enough for him.

Shiro shakes his head, rolls over so he can switch to push-ups, and tries to focus. Maybe trying to remember one specific thing is too much for now, maybe he should just try to remember _anything_ without setting off a flashback. The arena stuff comes back so easy, the stink of blood and the grime of the locker room and the screaming in the infirmary and the hot throb of too many bodies waiting for their turn to die, all of it brings back fragmented chunks of hazy memory that knock him on his ass. The cell didn't bring back anything, except the sense memory of the horrible blankets and the rough walls, but to be fair he spent most of the time he was in his cell wondering what they'd do if he died. Not in their arena, never in the arena, never for their entertainment, but if his heart gave out in the middle of the night and all the doctors could do was shrug about how weak humans are, what would happen?

Not helping, not helping. Shiro grits his teeth and pushes faster, blood like fire licking through his veins, like it'll burn him up if he doesn't keep moving. They don't give him the high-intensity stuff this early in the day, ever; whatever they want from him tonight must be...shit.

If Sendak's treating her like he treated Shiro, Pidge is standing naked in front of him now, arms at her sides. Or held behind her back, if she's like Shiro and didn't _cooperate_. And Sendak is sitting, because he likes that he can sit and still be the biggest, most imposing presence in the room. He's looking her over, not with a leer or anything like lust or even interest in his eyes, because being some kind of fuck trophy is easier to bear than being meat. And he narrates - Shiro was a little skinny, then, between the mission rations and the lack of room to keep up his routine and the muscles that were already starting to disobey him even with the stimulators. Skinny, and so easily bruised compared to most species, too hairless to keep himself warm, and Sendak had argued at length with his lieutenant at the time about whether his cock being too small indicated other weaknesses.

(The lieutenant had suggested it was only small for a Galra, quite large by human standards. Shiro was never sure whether he was trying to play 'good cop' or trying to be kind or just wanted to be right; he ripped the guy's throat out the first time he was on the same fucking rage drugs he's on today.)

Of course when he thinks about Sendak he can remember things. Strong emotions, probably, times the adrenaline was pumping. Most of it runs together like the fights as he remembers them, because after a while the only difference night to night was how many people Sendak was willing to share him with. 

Still not helping. He's trying not to think about Sendak, because he'll think about Pidge, and it's not like any memory associated with him is going to be any good at all. He wouldn't have escaped if Sendak was tired of him, he would have been killed. Definitely not recaptured at the earliest opportunity. None of the other fighters liked him, not even the ones who weren't afraid of him, unless there's some brief moment of connection buried somewhere inaccessible in his memory. 

Shiro stands up, push-ups just not enough movement for him. Running in place isn't much better but he can get both his arms and legs involved and the pounding of his bare feet on the floor is a satisfying kind of pain. He's slipping, can't focus, losing himself little by little to the Champion.

Maybe it won't have as much effect on Pidge, the way Sendak likes to get close and loom big, remind everyone just how much bigger he is. It won't be like it was for Shiro, the first time in his life he ever, ever felt small. But that won't do her any good when he starts _touching_ , rough and impersonal, grabs her jaw and tugs her face up so he can inspect her. Maybe she's stronger than Shiro, maybe when he pushes his fingers in her mouth to check her teeth she'll bite him, and it will go so, so badly for her from there but she won't go the rest of her life knowing just how early she stopped fighting. He's going to hurt her anyway.

Going to bend her over the desk, eventually, but not before he fucking touches her, everywhere, cold and impersonal and evaluating. And laughing, almost, when he'd tease, trick Shiro into thinking he was going to grab his dick and then moving to pinch the muscles of his upper thigh or draw claws over his lower abdomen, until he felt almost safe, like it wasn't going to be what he was so afraid it was going to be. Sharp, cruel twist of fear and relief, tensing against his actual touch but almost, almost relaxing against the touches that wouldn't happen, and then it started.

Pidge is strong, stronger than he knew, stronger than probably even she knows. She'll bend over that desk, maybe make them bend her over because she's still resisting them, still not ready to give an inch, and she'll think about flying, and Shiro's touch instead of Sendak's, and it won't matter that he makes her come with his cruel fingers and crueler words because she won't be there, not really, and she'll come out the other side fine.

Shiro's thighs ache, heart pounds, shoulders scream at him, and even he has to finally admit defeat and slow down, slower and slower until he's cooled down enough to just pace around the room. It ebbs and flows like this, takes everything he has and then backs off until he can generate more. If he throws himself into it hard enough, sometimes he can even take a nap when it's in a down cycle, shut it all down. That’s not going to happen for him today.

Feet planted, arms up over his head, he can almost touch the ceiling and the stretch is divine. Part of Shiro, the worst part, kind of missed the arena, the performance boosters, the inhibition blockers, missed having the part of his brain that tells him where his limits are turned off. There's nothing like going as hard as you can go, as long as you can go, then a little harder, a little longer, until you just can't, until there's nothing left. Nothing like the relief of stretching it out after, getting himself ready to give more. Nothing so satisfying as Sendak putting him through his paces after a long night in the arena, forcing Shiro's body to find more and more reserves to keep up. 

Maybe Sendak will like Pidge better. Maybe he does, already, he's summoned her twice and has barely wanted to see Shiro at all. She's fresh, and new, and differently resistant than Shiro was, she's probably more exciting. Not worn out, scarred to shit, ungrateful enough to escape and stupid enough to be captured again. Shiro’s not such a bright, sparkling trophy this time; Sendak had said it himself, in so many words, Shiro's here to be put out to stud. Retired before he's completely useless.

Shiro shakes his head, disgusted; he'd forgotten, almost, how desperately he needed Sendak's approval. Not him, no, not Shiro, that was the Champion, everything Shiro doesn't want to feel and all the ways he doesn't want to think of himself responding, those belong to the Champion, not to him. The drug cocktail is doing its magic, and Shiro has obviously slipped entirely away, and he's the Champion now. That's it, that's all.

*

The guards have been almost gentle with Pidge, until now. Now the guard escorting her to wherever she's going next - Sendak hadn't said, because he barely said anything to her - has a gun pressed to the small of her back. Pidge isn't sure why she's bothered, there's no way Sendak will let anyone kill her when he has no other option for his fucking breeding program. He wouldn't have wasted all that time inspecting every - _every_ \- inch of her and having Haxus take notes if she were disposable. It might feel threatening if Pidge weren't working so hard on not being in her body, not thinking about what it had just gone through or how it feels.

"What's your name?" Pidge asks, the first time she's actually asked anyone. 

"Mertar," she says, to Pidge's surprise. Maybe it turns out she's actually super nice, and they'll have a bonding moment. Won't it be funny, making friends with a guard at the moment Sendak expects her to be most afraid. 

"I'm Pidge," she says.

"Sure."

"Where are you taking me?"

"Arena," she says, and pushes her gun harder against Pidge's back to make her walk faster. Okay. Bonding over.

They must want to make her watch how vicious Shiro can be again, must expect her to be shocked when Shiro turns out to have a surplus of unchecked rage, when he needs to make something or someone suffer so he doesn't feel helpless for a little while. Or maybe Sendak saw more than she meant to show him, that night, and he knows Shiro at his most brutal isn't exactly something she's repelled by. Making Shiro hate himself for the things he could find even a little joy in worked so well, impossibly well, so maybe they think confronting her over and over by the way her heart skips a beat for his wild grin and blood up to his elbows will work on her. It might. It's easy to pretend, now, that they're not going to break her because they haven't yet. It's not like they've even really started trying. 

But pretending to be brave helps, at least for now. 

They reach the big, crowded waiting area, and Mertar knocks Pidge around with the butt of her gun until they reach a pair of wide double doors. Maybe if she hadn't bitten Sendak she'd get to watch from the box again, have more of those pretty syrupy drinks, 

The double doors don't lead to a seat in the arena, but a small room full of the biggest variety of aliens Pidge has ever seen in one place. It's crowded, the air thick with fear and sweat, and too many of them are trying to anxiously pace with no room to actually do it. Everyone's terrified, because across the room there's a big, solid sliding door that will let them out into the arena. Okay. So she's not here to watch.

The doors close behind her, and Pidge takes a deep breath. She has a lifetime of experience navigating crowds unnoticed, and not long before she was captured she'd started training with Keith, who coached her into recognizing weaknesses, how to tell when someone bigger than you is an easy target and someone smaller will kill you before you see it coming. So she takes one more deep breath, and starts weaving through the crowd.

It'd be easier if she knew anything at all about any of these species, but Pidge takes in what she can. A small handful of beings with lots of spindly arms, hopefully as breakable as they look. Lots of them have tails, and they might not all be as easy to unbalance as the beast she'd seen Shiro fight but it's a good starting point. Some humanoids with weird - probably normal for their kind - shapes, exaggerated shoulders and arms but short legs, or long long arms and legs and compact, round torsos. No one's carrying a weapon, so no easy way to guess who's ranged and might be caught off-guard by a melee attack. Pidge's fingers itch to reach for her bayard; she'd been getting so good. 

She's not as prepared as she'd like, but by the time a heavy Galra voice breaks through the haze of anxious murmuring she has the beginnings of a strategy for maybe half the creatures in here. Hopefully she'll be matched up with one of those and won't be on the back foot from the start.

"When that door opens," says the disembodied voice, "a timer will begin counting down one and a half varga. If you are alive when the timer goes off, your prize is your life. If you defeat your opponent in that time, your prize will be glory. Most of you will receive nothing."

Not being paired off to fight each other, then. What was the other thing Sendak mentioned? Throwing waves of bodies to break against their best fighters? That's - that's okay, then, if Pidge can just focus on any of these beings who might try to kill her to thin out the competition she might be able to hold off and run down the clock. But she should put on a good show, she might - if Sendak is risking her in the arena she's not as essential as she thought. She'll have to make him love her like he loves Shiro.

The door opens, and Pidge bolts faster than she’s ever moved in her life. There are caches of weapons around the arena, unless they've changed it since the fights she watched, and she aims for a farther one so she won't get caught up in much of a frenzy. Hopefully. There's nothing even close to the reach of her bayard - well, guns, but she doesn't have enough experience to rely on those. She grabs a pair of wicked-looking curved daggers, close enough to her katar that she'll probably be okay. Perfectly capable of killing a bunch of probably-innocent victims of wrong place, wrong time. Because she has to, she has to, the only other choice is to give up and die.

There are boulders near the cache, and Pidge pulls herself up on top of a shorter one so she can get a sense of things. The crowding around the weapons isn't as bad as she expected; more of the others than she realized have claws or fangs or spikes, natural weapons they’ve been practicing with their whole lives. She can't tell where their mutual opponent is, which isn't great; maybe they have to thin themselves out first and then the big one will be released. Or they're smaller than she expects, and her size won't be the advantage she needs. 

Okay, focus on the fighting that's happening now, no time to plan for future problems. Pidge spots a group coming her way, a big humanoid with a sword being driven towards the rocks by three or four of the spindly-armed creatures Pidge had pegged as easy targets, if their limbs are as breakable as they look. She hadn't noticed the long, thin claws on each of their eight hands. Great.

Pidge scrambles up onto a bigger rock, less visible, and lets the octo-arms get the humanoid’s back to the wall and tear him to shreds. She would...really like not to be torn to shreds; maybe if she stays still up here, they won't see her. But, no, she has to be part of the show, and she has to know for sure she can survive this without Shiro, know what she’s capable of. So she creeps to the edge of the rock, and crouches, springs into the air with a scream that's going to leave her hoarse, and drives her blades with impossible force into one of the creatures' heads. The sound, the sensation of his skull and brains (presumably, she doesn't really know what they keep up there) giving way for her knives, the gush of blood - Pidge can't be sick right now. Bloodthirsty, not sick.

At least there's no time to fixate. The other two are coming at her and she has limited time to yank her blades free and drop to the ground, roll behind one of them so she can - cut his legs off, apparently. She was just going to slash the backs of his knees, take him out for a minute so she could focus on the other, but - god, they're as fragile as they look, and they bleed _so much_.

The third one lands a harder kick than she would have guessed him capable of, sends her sprawling. She doesn't lose her grip on her daggers, at least not until he swipes god knows how many of those long claws down her back. What she wouldn't give for her paladin armor right now, not this shitty canvas shirt that shreds so easily and the bodysuit that doesn't do much to dull the pain. This creature could kill her, she could die here. 

She's not going to. Pidge kicks out a little wildly, manages to connect with enough of the creature to knock it back a little so she can roll onto her back - _ow_ \- and spring to her feet. She almost gets tangled in her shirt, slipping down her arms with the back torn clean through, but keeps her mobility long enough to stab her attacker between two sets of arms. Not as decisively fatal as the other two, but he falls, and he doesn't get back up. Pidge shakes the remains of her overshirt off, wipes her blades clean on her bodysuit, and takes a second to catch her breath. The crowd is roaring; probably not for her, but it gets her blood pumping all the same. 

Things kind of run together, after that; no wonder Shiro can't remember much, if he spent so much of his time fighting. Adrenaline takes over, pushes Pidge out of her own head so she only sees in fragments, a fist coming at her here, an exposed neck there, the ceiling when someone's tail wraps around her ankle and takes her down hard enough to knock the wind out of her. And blood, so much blood, puddles in some places on the floor, her suit thick and tacky with it, blood comes in so many colors and so many different smells and Pidge will never, ever be able to wash it all off. And around the edges of it all, something familiar she can't quite place, streaks of purple light and the occasional body cut clean in half she has to step over.

Her brain can't quite grab on to it, and there's always something waiting to hurt her if she loses focus, so it's not until she rounds a pillar tracking one of the last few opponents that it hits her. And it only hits her because it's staring her right in the face; she couldn't pick the fighter out of the crowd because he's the same size as most of them, because it's Shiro. Shit. Shit shit shit.

It's two-on-one, a reptilian a little taller and broader than Shiro, like the one who threw Pidge around with her tail until another competitor saw an opening, and someone Pidge doesn't recognize from the waiting room, smaller than she is with big bug eyes. Maybe they were doing the same thing she was, trying to stay hidden so they could size up the competition. They look like they're actually a little bit of a challenge for Shiro, the little one zipping around underfoot to keep his footing unsteady and the big one grabbing at limbs with its tail to keep Shiro off balance. 

For the first time since the arena door opened, Pidge has a chance to plan a little, while he's distracted. She only has two hopes of gaining an advantage over Shiro, the element of surprise or disabling his arm. And since there was no computer in the weapons cache she found, she really only has one option: he can't see her until she wants him to. Pidge crouches and creeps by the fight, low to the ground and slow moving, until she's reached another crop of boulders behind Shiro's back. Too high to just pull herself up, but craggy enough she can climb with only a little trouble. There's a cut on her upper right arm, long and deep, and it's really unhappy about supporting her weight, but it's just going to have to chill.

It's not a great position; either of Shiro's opponents - nope, there goes the little one, in a flash of purple and sizzle of burnt flesh - Shiro's opponent could see her easily if he glanced up, and they might wait and see if Pidge leapt in to help, going for her share of the glory, but she can't count on that. He's wounded, though, bleeding badly, the severed tip of his tail twitching in the dirt; it won't be long. The reptilian slashes at Shiro with its claws, but it swings too wide, gives Shiro an opening to duck under his arm and drive a solid fist into his side, uses him like a punching bag for a few blows before lighting his cybernetic hand up and punching a hole right through his head. He's so - why does she - not the time, not the time. Shiro could turn and look up any second.

Pidge launches herself into the air, aims her daggers for his right shoulder. if she can't disable his arm, she can at least make it hurt like a bitch to use. It's a good plan, except she's never seen him with his shirt off and doesn't actually know for sure where his arm connects. Shiro looks up and his eyes widen; he has just enough time that he's ready to react when her daggers bounce off the Galran metal at his shoulder. He doesn't have to do much, either, just use her own momentum against her and knock her into the pillar she'd hidden behind earlier. Shit, that hurts. And shit, she let go of her daggers, doesn't know where they landed. But she doesn't have to win, she just has to live, has to run out the clock. 

She can't do anything until she catches her breath, so she focuses on that for just a tick - too long, almost, because she barely registers Shiro charging at her in time to roll out of the way of his fist so it plunges into the dirt instead of her head. His eyes are a little glassy, a little hazy, and while he's definitely more dangerous if they gave him something to take the metaphorical safety off, it feels just a little bit better to know he probably doesn't recognize her, knows what he's doing but not to whom. So she has to stay alive for herself _and_ for him, so he doesn't come out of it to find out he'd killed her. Highly motivating.

It won't be as entertaining, probably, but fuck the show, her best option right now is putting distance between them so she can regroup a little, find her daggers or a new weapon, a place to ambush him from. She scrambles forward, belly in the dirt, pushing herself up to her knees as she goes. Before she gets very far, before she can stand up and really run, Shiro grabs her ankle and yanks her back and it _hurts_ , holy shit does it hurt, his hand's big enough to fully encircle her ankle and it hurts everywhere he's touching, burning, searing pain.

Pidge kicks, and pulls, trying to dislodge him; it's easier than she expected, his grip wasn't all that tight. Didn't really need to be. Running away isn't an option now - there's no way she can move fast enough with his handprint seared into her ankle, suit burned away so she can see just how bad it is. She just has to stop him from killing her, just has to run out the clock. 

Something glints in the dirt near her head and she flails her arm out, cuts her palm on the blade but manages to grab it. It's just a little hunting knife, but it's sharp, and it's in her hands, and when she twists around and jams it into his shoulder this time she hits flesh. It catches a little on - bone? the metal of his arm? - but even with the cuts on her arm and hand she manages to push it into the hilt. Shiro grunts and falls back, his arm giving a little when he puts his weight on it. 

The adrenaline's wearing thin, though, and she aches all over, her ankle's killing her, and she just gave up her weapon. She should try to get away but she won't move fast enough; she should have stabbed him in the leg, maybe. He hasn't even bothered to pull the knife out, so that might not have slowed him down at all. She could push her advantage, probably the smartest move; she's no match for him unarmed but pulling the knife out would give him several precious seconds with her in easy range of his weaponized hand. She'll just have to hope it hurts too much to get her in time.

Pidge is fast, even injured and exhausted, and she manages to scramble up and launch herself at Shiro before he realizes what's happening. She knocks him flat on his back, braces her knees in the dirt on either side of his waist, and - she could twist the knife, make him hurt, but even if he's the Champion right now he's also _Shiro_ and all she needs to do is stay alive. So she just pulls it out, slower than it went in, dug deep into bone and, as far as she can tell through the tear in his suit, pinned between flesh and metal. But it comes out, and she twists to plunge it into his thigh, because fuck a good show she's just going to run until he catches her or time runs out. Twisting messes up her balance, though, and it's not like she's all that heavy, and Shiro surges up and once again sends her sprawling. 

He pushes to his hands and knees and crawls towards her, a shallow imitation of the Black Lion, eyes wild and hungry. She'd be pretty into it in a different - shit, she's into it now, a little thrill twisting up her spine along with the fear. She does her best to look like she doesn't have her knife ready for him, like she's still off-kilter from being thrown, and he prowls towards her, and - 

An alarm sounds, shrill and piercing. Shiro backs off immediately, holding his hands tight to his ears and screwing up his face. It's obnoxious, but it doesn't hurt - but it would if she were, say, on something that enhanced her senses to make her a better predator. At least it stopped him right away, she doesn't have to keep fighting while the guards take their sweet time getting into the pit and escorting them out. 

The infirmary's quiet; theirs was apparently the only match, and of course it's only the two of them who need treating, everyone else dead in the dirt. The medic who heals Pidge is cold and silent, but efficient, running the handheld healing device over every little mark on her, even the tiny scratches from brushing up against rocks or being dragged on the ground. When he holds the device over the burn on her ankle it feels so good Pidge kind of wants to cry. Not now, not here, not in front of him. The medic gives her a clean suit, a fresh overshirt, and after she changes the guard handcuffs her and sits her down in the waiting room.

Shiro doesn't take much longer, but he looks awful when he walks out of the treatment rooms, exhausted and slump-shouldered and...deflated, almost, like they let all the air out of him. The guard just disables his arm, doesn't bother with cuffs, and no one jabs them with guns to make them move any faster through the silent halls. Uncuffed and back in their room, Pidge is at a loss, so she just sits on the bed and puts her face in her hands and tries to get her thoughts in order.

"If I didn't know it would make you uncomfortable," Shiro says, quiet, just a little hoarse, "I'd throw myself at your feet right now and grovel."

"Please don't," Pidge says into her hands, even though he just said he wouldn't. She looks up at him, even though right now looking at him just makes her feel...tired. "I do forgive you."

Shiro crosses the room to her and kneels at her feet. If she didn't know him as well as she does, if she trusted him less, she'd worry he was about to make this uncomfortable. But he probably just wants to be at eye level instead of looming.

"Had you killed anyone before? Sentries, I know, but flesh-and-blood Galra?"

Pidge shakes her head. She hadn't. She has now. And not even Galra but a bunch of other prisoners, probably as scared and unsure as she is.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I knew this might happen, but I didn't think - so soon, and to throw you in with a mob - I'm sorry."

"Yeah," she says. Doesn't really know what to say. She feels empty, hollowed out, so tired she could sleep for a week, and she wants a hug and she doesn't know how to ask when she's afraid of how she'll react if he touches her with his cybernetic arm. He could have done so much worse to her, she's seen him do so much worse, even when he burned her he was being whatever the Champion thinks "gentle" is. It's good, if even out of his head like he was he recognized her enough to tone it down.

It hurt, though.

"I can sleep on the floor tonight, if you need me to," he says. "I get it if you don't want to be that close to me."

Pidge shakes her head. "It's not like that."

"But if it gets like that."

"Okay," she says. "I - I know the sonic showers get everything, but I still feel like I'm covered in it." 

"That's never gone away, for me," Shiro says. "I hope it does for you."

Pidge's hands feel sticky and the smell is - of course alien blood wouldn't all be like human blood, but so much of it was so sweet. The skinny octo-armed creatures were the worst, thick black blood chokingly sweet. The first ones she killed, and she was so brutal, and it was so easy, and - 

Pidge knocks Shiro out of the way and hurries to the toilet so she can be sick. She's barely eaten today so it isn't even satisfying, just stomach cramps and acid.

"I can stay away," Shiro says, "or I can come over and keep you company."

"Please," she says, and he must understand because a few seconds later he's kneeling next to her, close enough she can feel his body heat. Her hair's not really long enough to be in danger, but he gathers back the longer bits anyway. He rubs her back, slow and gentle, and she knows one of the hands he's using must be the cybernetic one, and she doesn't want to shrink away, so that's...fine, apparently.

She can't get herself away from it, from repeating the awful, awful noise of daggers in someone's skull, the squish and the crack of bone and - she's sick again, and a couple more times, and Shiro just rubs her back and hums a little, some meandering tune she doesn't recognize. Maybe he's making it up. He didn't have anyone to do this for him, the first time he killed; maybe it didn't make him sick like this, because he's better at surviving than she is.

Pidge rests her head against the cool rim of the toilet, nice and soothing against her overheated face. Shiro keeps rubbing her back, keeps humming, and she must fall asleep like that because the next time she opens her eyes he's scooping her up in his arms and carrying her to bed. 

She still feels safe when he holds her; they didn't manage to take that away. Yet.

*

"Hi," Shiro says, as Pidge swings her leg over and straddles his thighs. He was so worried she'd be afraid of him, want - need - to keep her distance, that Sendak took the comfort of just being around each other away from them. That was probably the plan, but instead she's gotten a little clingy; Shiro doesn't mind. He's worried about her, more than he has been, but it's easier to worry with her warm weight settled in his lap than if she were across the room, afraid.

"Hi," she says, smiles at him. It's a little smile, barely more than a quirk of her lips, but it's the first he's seen in a couple days and it might as well be one of her face-splitting grins for how relieved he is to see it. She doesn't seem to have anything else to say, so Shiro takes one of her hands and has her rest it on his shoulder.

"Feel that?" he asks, pressing her thumb against his newest scar. She frowns.

"It didn't heal?" 

"I asked them to let it scar," Shiro says. Pidge frowns even more, stroking up and down the subtle ridge under his bodysuit.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"No," he says. "That's not - I have a lot of scars. And they're all - he likes to mark me. All the hits I've taken, the marks I've _earned_ , he had them healed away. I wanted an honest one." He tightens his hand over Pidge's, squeezes a little.

"He healed all of mine," she says, voice gone small and quiet. She hasn't talked about it; Shiro thought maybe the arena drove that particular trauma right out of her head. It'd be nice if Sendak had done her that favor, but of course that's not how it works. "There weren't many."

"I hope that stays true," Shiro says. Sendak has other plans for taking Pidge's body away from her the way he took Shiro's away from him. There's no real reason to believe that means he'll restrain himself, but it's nice to hope, means he's not as close to losing himself entirely as he thought he might be.

"What if I can't do it?" she asks. "What if it turns out there's no secret reserve of survival instinct hiding somewhere inside me and I just break?"

"You won't," he says. There was a look in her eyes, when she came flying at him from above, when she stabbed him, when she stared him down at the end, ready to do what it took. His memories of the arena are never very good, but he remembers that, remembers the way it resonated all the way down his spine, that feeling of meeting his match. He could still kill her pretty handily in a fair fight, still dreads the idea of facing her one-on-one if they drug him, but she'd take a good few chunks out of him before she fell.

"I try not to remember what we're here for," she says. "If I think about it too much I start wondering why I’m trying to stay alive."

"That's all you can do," he says. "You're gonna get through this, Pidge, I'll get you through this."

Pidge shifts a little, keeps her hand on his scar because he's still holding her in place but scoots back so she can lean down and rest her head on his shoulder, almost-whisper her next words into the high neck of his bodysuit.

"It felt so good," she says; she's cried a couple times, since the arena, but something about how much she sounds like she's fighting it back now makes Shiro's heart crack right down the center. Because he knows this one, and he doesn't know how to help because he never figured it out himself.

"I know," he says. "It's - everything gets worse and worse, and you take 'good' where you can get it, and the only place to get it is from him, and you get all mixed up - I don't know. Maybe you're less needy than I am, you'll handle it better. I don't mean to - "

"I feel good right now," Pidge says, a little less quiet, a little less like she's a half-second from crying. "I mean, I feel awful. But..."

She trails off. Shiro squeezes the hand he's still holding, wraps his other arm around her waist and squeezes that, too. A year ago he didn't have to worry about surviving for anyone but himself, and it was easier, so much easier, but he didn't have a surprisingly solid weight in his lap either, someone to talk to, someone to focus on outside his own head. Sendak didn't keep them together by mistake, Shiro's sure, he must have his reasons. But - you take 'good' where you can get it.

"He's trying to make me afraid of you," she says. "He fucked up."

"Maybe not," Shiro says. "Maybe you will be, eventually."

"You could have crushed my ankle," she says. "I know how strong that arm is, you could have broken me beyond repair or taken my foot right off, and any time you could have just torn a hole right through me. You were totally out of your head and you still restrained yourself. I know you'll end up hurting me, but I'm not afraid of you."

"Maybe you don't have a survival instinct," he says; she laughs, of all things, puffs of air tickling his neck.

"I guess we'll find out," she says, and shifts around so she's sitting in his lap, not astride it. He lets her have her hand back, finally, and wraps his arms around her to keep her steady. They started giving her something new in her drug cocktail the morning after the arena, something that makes her tired. He doesn't think too hard about what they might be trying to change inside her that it knocks her out so hard. She's right, thinking about what's coming eventually is just too hard. Why _is_ he working so hard to survive when he knows what Sendak's going to make him do, why is she when she's going to have to suffer through it.

Shiro shuts his eyes, like if he can't see he can't think, and he presses a soft kiss to the top of her head. She's going to fall asleep on him, dead to the world for the next few vargas, and eventually he'll get too fidgety and have to drop her on the bed so he can work that out but for now he's pretty content to just hold on to her.

She's right; it does still feel good.


	4. iii: Keith

Keith sighs, hard enough to blow his bangs up a little bit. As usual, no one on the planet they just liberated had seen anything useful, not even those who had been held captive on the nearby Galra base. No human weapons let loose on the population, no tiny humans chained to a lab table developing weapons or leading a robot army or whatever else they wanted her for. Someone had overheard a guard asking another if he'd been to the fights the night before, but nothing more detailed than that. And they already found a base with a gladiator pit in this sector, found it and cleared it out and didn't find Shiro or Pidge and then they fucking blew it up.

"Okay, I'm pulling rank," Hunk says, from close behind Keith. He's gotten freaky good at sneaking around. "You need to sleep, team leader’s orders."

"I'm fine," Keith says; his eyesight's going a little blurry, but he just wants to make it through the rest of the notes a third time.

Hunk rests his hands on Keith's shoulders, big and warm, presses into the tight muscles with his thumbs. Keith leans back into it; Hunk's playing dirty but no one else can get the knots out like he can.

"You won't find anything when you're this tired," Hunk says.

"I might."

Hunk laughs a little, and despite himself Keith is practically melting for him. It's not fair how easy he is for Hunk's brand of affection, not when he's trying to keep a safe distance. Hunk's a target as long as he's flying Black, and Keith can't - Keith's thing for heroes is just going to keep hurting him. And there's only so much he can bear, and he needs to focus.

"Allura wants us to stay for a few quintants, see what we can do to keep their government stable. You can spend all that time going over what we have, or you can spend it sick 'cause you're not eating or sleeping."

"You drive a hard bargain," Keith says, but he knows when he's beaten. He shrugs Hunk's hands off, more than a little reluctantly, and stands up.

"Thank you," Hunk says, like Keith's doing him some kind of favor and not just being a sulky dick who can't take care of himself.

"Yeah," Keith says. Hunk's smiling at him a little, eyes all soft and warm and worried, and Keith's not remotely a hugger but if he asked for a hug right now Hunk would squeeze him so tight he couldn't breathe and it’d feel so good he couldn’t stand it. "And, uh, thanks for the massage."

"Anytime," Hunk says, and Keith knows he means it. Maybe once they've rescued Shiro and Pidge he can spare some energy for figuring out what his idiot heart is doing and whether it's worthwhile; for now he just walks away to the relative safety of his room.


	5. Two

Vonka hums; it's rapidly becoming Pidge's least favorite sound. It’s the same noise she makes when she's fucking around with alien tech she doesn't quite understand but wants to play with anyway, and it makes her nervous when the scientists and doctors remind her she's just kind of a weird experiment for them. There's something about having her feet in stirrups, legs spread too wide and pushed too far back towards her head, and having to think about how the person with all the sharp things and insertables doesn't really think of her as, like, a life. It sucks.

He hums again (if only she could kick him) and then spreads her open with gloved fingers, pushes yet another sensor inside without warning. The lube and the sensor are both cold, but she knows they'll warm up pretty quickly. It's less uncomfortable than how deep he pushes it, anyway. All their advanced tech and he apparently can't get a decent reading without jamming things into her cervix.

"You're responding well to the treatments," he says; it's entirely possible he's talking to her uterus, not to her. "I'd heard about how modifiable your kind are, but it's quite something to see it for myself."

"Um," Pidge says. "Thank you?"

"At this rate, you'll be ready in a matter of quintants, not phoebs. Sendak will be pleased."

Well, great. Anything to make Sendak happy. Pidge’s heart rate picking up, her breathing coming a little quicker, shallower; she's gotten good at not thinking ahead, but her body knows when something bad is coming, when to panic. She closes her eyes and focuses on breathing, just breathing. Something beeps and Vonka pulls the sensor out more roughly than he probably needs to. Hopefully that was the last one, and they can move on to the _real_ fun part.

Vonka hums, again, at the readings; when Pidge opens her eyes he's standing at his workspace, laying syringes out onto a tray. A lot of syringes. Eight, last time, but before that was only three, and before that was seven, so she has no real idea what to expect. He doesn't seem so much like one for mind games, but Pidge hasn't discarded the possibility he's giving her placebos sometimes just to throw the count off. 

"I'm afraid you won't be able to compete tonight," he says, always does, an oddly genuine apology. "I can send something up in the morning if you're still recovering."

Great. She can spend the rest of the day so weak she's considered, more than once, asking Shiro to feed her when dinner comes, and tomorrow she can feel all hot and itchy under her skin until she has to kill someone. Or not; he always sends the steroid, or whatever, up, but they don't always bring her to the arena. They're not letting her settle, develop a routine to cling to.

Vonka brings the tray over and stands between her legs. Pidge closes her eyes again, hates looking at his hands on her. And she's never been afraid of needles, but these are...big. For some reason they don't seem to have a huge supply of human-sized medical equipment. Weird. Vonka pinches her thigh, and starts injecting. He starts with the hard ones, at least, the ones that need to go into muscle instead of veins, gets the worst pain over with first. Four of those, and then he lets go of the newly-sore spot and finds a vein on her other thigh. Six of those; maybe he'll keep adding things, get too excited, accidentally make her infertile. Except then Sendak would just kill her.

"You can get dressed," Vonka says, moving the stirrups and unstrapping her feet. "A sentry will be here shortly."

He goes back to his terminal, never acknowledges her once he's finished, and she - a little slowly, a little stiffly - climbs down and pulls her bodysuit on. Her legs ache from the shots, from being held in place for so long, and it's harder than it should be. The fatigue's already settling into her bones, and she doesn't bother with the overshirt. It's less important, after the couple hours she spent naked and under examination. Oh no, a guard or some other prisoner might see the shape of her. What a violation.

The medical wing is a pretty good distance from her room; by the time they get there she has to slump against the wall to stay upright. The guards help her walk sometimes, but the sentries never do. Shiro's right there when the door opens, waiting for her, or more likely, he was pacing around and just happened to be next to the door at the right time. Either way it feels so good when he gathers her up she almost purrs.

"Soon," she mumbles up at him, once he's helped her get in bed. It's hard to talk, but it's important, the most important thing in the world. He frowns, and his eyebrows knit together, and Pidge hates when his face does that because if he's worried like that he probably doesn't have a secret plan to escape that he's just been waiting to reveal. She reaches up, the hardest thing in the world, and pats his cheek. That makes him smile a little, and he kisses her palm.

"Go to sleep," he says, and she doesn't really have any choice but to obey.

*

It's good, Shiro knows, that he's been summoned to Sendak's quarters, good to know he hasn't been entirely discarded in favor of a shiny new toy. They didn't give him anything today, so he doesn't have the luxury of the exhaustion the artificial adrenaline leaves him with; he's keyed up, high from the fight, having trouble standing still. He's still the Champion, and the Champion _wants_ this, wants Sendak to wear him out. He just doesn't like the way Pidge's treatments knock her out, doesn't want her to wake up disoriented and alone. 

"You seem distracted," Sendak says, drags a claw down Shiro's spine, not quite hard enough to draw blood but only just. He's already bathed Shiro, already stroked him to one shuddering orgasm with his rough hand, and now he's just making Shiro _wait_ , damp and unsteady on his legs. The waiting is always the hardest, makes it too easy for Shiro to start thinking again. 

He arches his back a little, looks at Sendak over his shoulder with his eyelashes lowered.

"Just eager," he says, pitches his voice low. "I missed you."

Sendak takes a step back and slaps his ass, hard, swipes a little at the end so his claws rake across the reddening skin. 

"Selfish," he says, slaps Shiro again. "And when I've been working so hard to make your companion feel welcome."

Shiro pouts; Sendak isn't always into bratty, so he's taking a chance, but worst case he'll just get roughed up more than usual. Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

"You like her better than me," he says, and Sendak hits him hard enough to make him stumble forward. He presses into Shiro's space, keeps him from getting his balance back, forces Shiro to keep stumbling across the room and pushes him down so he's bent over the bed once he gets there. Shiro braces on his elbows, wiggles his ass a little, shows himself off and begs for it in one move.

"You think very highly of yourself," Sendak says, spanks him so hard Shiro can almost feel a bruise forming already. "I've spoiled you."

"Yeah," Shiro purrs, spreads his legs a little, arches his back more. Sendak slaps him right over his hole a couple times; Shiro exaggerates his moans, but only a little. It's been so _long_ , and he's ready to get out of his head, no matter how ashamed he gets later. He's earned a little distraction, a little good. He's probably earned the guilt, too.

Sendak laughs and pushes one of his fingers in dry, just to the first knuckle. At least he's retracted his claws. Shiro only heard, didn't see, Sendak changing out the 'hand' part of his arm, so he doesn't know to expect the little electric shock when Sendak spanks him again. It's good, makes him arch even more, push back onto Sendak's finger, needy. Pain always makes him horny and so much time in the arena without release has him a little desperate.

Of course Sendak doesn't give him what he wants, not really, just lands blow after blow on Shiro's tender skin, the shocks varying in intensity. He squirms on Sendak's thick finger, not ever quite sure whether he's trying to push up into the spanking or away from it, and he doesn't need to exaggerate his gasps and groans anymore. Sendak bends down and spits, thick and viscous, over Shiro's hole, pulls his finger out to get it wet, and finally pushes back inside for real. 

No, it’s not the same finger - there's a jolt deep inside Shiro, pain and something deeper that resonates in his cock and balls. Sendak fucks him slow and steady with the unyielding metal, but the shocks come at random, and by the time he drips cold lube over Shiro's overheated skin and pushes another finger inside Shiro's dropped down so his chest is flat on the bed, face turned to the side so he doesn't suffocate in the sheets. He doesn't have the leverage to fuck back on Sendak's fingers the way he'd like, but it feels so fucking good it doesn't matter. Shiro's cock is dripping, filthy wet with it, and when he tries to whine his disappointment when Sendak pulls out and leaves him empty it comes out more like a wail.

Sendak laughs again, lower, more of a growl, and wraps his strong hands around Shiro's hips, squeezing him just a little too tight. He hikes Shiro's ass up until Shiro’s balanced on his toes, has to get him to the right height, and now Shiro has even less leverage. His cock throbs; there’s nothing as good as being fully at Sendak's mercy (and easier not to beat himself up when he was helpless in Sendak's arms). Sendak pushes the fat head of his cock inside Shiro, slowly, too big, always too big. But it pops inside, thick and too-hot and perfect, fucking perfect. Sendak lets him savor it for a moment, savor his cock dripping on the bed and the intense stretch and the pain radiating from his thoroughly-spanked ass, and then he doesn't so much push the rest of the way inside as pull Shiro back onto his massive cock, inch by inch.

There's nothing in the universe as satisfying as a big cock, and even back when Shiro still wanted to resist he had a hard time not dissolving into a shivering mess for Sendak. His cock is thick, fattest in the middle so it plugs Shiro up perfectly and his ass can clench around the narrower base, and ridged, skin thicker and harder than a human's. He feels like a particularly excellent toy, presses against Shiro in all the best places, fills him up just perfectly. And he fucks Shiro so _hard_ , always so hard, using his grip on Shiro's hips to push him away when he pulls back and pull him in when Sendak thrusts, punishing, bruising smack of skin on skin that leaves Shiro aching even when he hasn't been tenderized first. 

Sendak pounds the thoughts right out of his head, reduces him to pure sensation. Sweat slick on his skin, ache in his muscles from exertion, stretch in his shoulders from how he's laid out on the bed, Sendak's cock sparking pleasure up his spine, Sendak's electrified hand shocking him so randomly Shiro's not sure Sendak's fully in control, balls drawn tight and cock so hard it hurts and the sheets too soft in his grasp and Sendak's skin too rough against his own. Shiro clenches up around Sendak, knows how much he loves that, wants to be good, make him feel good, get what he's earned. Sendak growls and grinds into him, so deep Shiro can feel it in his throat, feel it everywhere, Sendak once again claiming every inch of this body Shiro surrendered to him long ago. 

It doesn't take much of that slow, dirty grind to make Shiro come, hips jerking and thighs twitching and the sweet ache of coming untouched, a different kind of electricity firing in his veins. His vision whites out for a second and he floats; maybe he could just float away, if he tried hard enough. But he plummets back to reality soon enough, to Sendak fucking him through it even harder than before, nerves singing with overstimulation. Too much, too real, pulling him out of his senses and back into this body he doesn't want to be in anymore. His eyes are tearing up, a little, softening cock bouncing between his legs, and he wants to pull away, just a little, but if Sendak knows that's what he's doing he'll turn it into a struggle, fuck Shiro even harder for even longer just to watch him squirm.

He comes soon enough, thick, tacky come spilling too hot into Shiro, filling him up until it feels like it's flowing into his veins. He moans weakly into the sheets, and Sendak laughs when he pulls out, so pleased when he wrecks Shiro like this. Shiro manages to pull himself the rest of the way onto the bed before his knees buckle, barely, and lets himself collapse flat on the soft sheets.

Sendak has to admire his handiwork, of course, press his claws into Shiro's red ass to make him gasp and wriggle, not sure whether he wants to push back into it - more pain, hurt him more, he can take it, please - or squirm away. He spreads Shiro's cheeks and rubs his rough thumb over Shiro's well-used hole, watching his pearlescent come leak back out. This is the part he'll hate the most later, how good this slow attention feels, his urge to show off only tempered by his inability to move much. Sendak slaps his ass, lightly this time, just a tap, and walks away. Shiro whines, a little, before he can stop himself; he's only going to get a cloth to wipe Shiro down with, probably, not far, and he'll be back soon, and Shiro shouldn't be craving him like this anyway.

It's just that Sendak's so gentle with him, now, in his own way, knows what's too rough and what's just rough enough to make Shiro purr, knows the way Shiro likes his chin gripped and his head tilted up to drink from a water pouch, the way Shiro likes when he presses in a little with the coarse cloth as he wipes him down. 

"You can sleep for one varga," Sendak says, so generous when Shiro's too fucked out to walk. Shiro almost asks him to stay, but he won't; it would just be another weakness Shiro shows him willingly, one more thing to punish himself for. 

*

Pidge hasn't ever seen Shiro like this, sore enough to have trouble moving, so listless it barely matters. She doesn't need to ask where he was, or what Sendak was doing to him, she just needs to keep it together and stretch out on the bed so he can lie between her legs and rest his head on her stomach, so she can wrap around him as much as possible, pet his hair and be strong for him for a change. 

"You said 'soon'," he says, out of the blue, not long after he managed to eat almost half his lunch before returning to the comfort of her arms. 

"We don't have to talk about it now," she says.

"No," Shiro says, "I've got to get my mind on something else. Did they give you any more than that?"

"He said I'd be ready in quintants, not phoebs. But as far as I can tell they don't have a word for a week, so maybe he meant a lot of quintants."

"But less than two phoebs worth."

"Maybe. I don't know how precise he was being."

Shiro sighs. "I still don't remember how I escaped," he says, like a confession.

"It's okay," she says. "They probably fixed whatever security issue let you get out a long time ago. I think if I got my hands on one of those little devices they use to disable your arm, I could figure out how to turn you back on, and if I could do that - and somehow hold on to a weapon from the arena - I think we could fight our way out. But I don't think either of us are very good pickpockets, especially not when I'm cuffed."

"The station is huge," Shiro says. "It'd take us forever to find our way out and we have no idea how many Galra are stationed here."

"Maybe everything but the arena's abandoned."

Shiro looks up at her and smiles a little, soft and sad. "Maybe."

"i could try seducing the doctor," she says, "and once he's under my spell I'd get him to declare me dead, and hope they shoot corpses out into space."

"And give them spacesuits?"

"Ideally." 

"And you'd float all the way back to Earth, and be safe."

"More like float all the way to the first big gun, and come back in balls out, shoot everything between me and you."

"My hero," Shiro says; she's not expecting it when he pushes up a little and gives her a soft kiss. They haven't, not since...and Pidge doesn't know whether it's okay how much she wants to drag him back down and kiss him again but she's not going to push. Shiro hovers over her for a second, so close she can feel his breath, and Pidge tries to stay still like she's dealing with a frightened animal but when he makes the slightest move forward she pushes up to meet him in the middle. He kisses her slow, and sweet, and Pidge can't stop thinking about where he was last night and she wants to cry.

He pulls away, settles back down, and she tightens her fingers in his hair for a second before going back to petting him.

"Maybe a dashing rebel leader will sneak into the arena, and he's only there to get the lay of the land before his ragtag band attacks, but he sees one of us fighting and is so taken he becomes fully devoted to the cause of freeing us."

"Is there even a rebellion to lead?" Pidge asks.

"That's the part you're not sure about?"

"I know how pretty I am when I'm filthy with blood and screaming like a wounded animal," she says. "Of course he'd fall in love."

"As long as you know that," Shiro says; he looks almost like he's actually happy, enjoying himself. She still wants to cry but she swallows it down, just smiles right back at him. Her legs ache, a little, still sore from holding them up so long the day before and spread a little wider than is comfortable to accommodate Shiro's waist, but a bomb would have to go off to make her move right now.

"I'm sorry you're here," Shiro says, turning his head a little to press the words into her suit, hiding the same way she does. "But I'm glad I have you."

"Yeah," Pidge says, scratches lightly at the nape of his neck. "Me, too."

*

Shiro doesn't really like to watch Pidge fight; he knows what the arena's done to him, knows what it will do to her eventually, and it's not like he enjoys the deaths of terrified prisoners of war. They're being careful with her - the arena's never _safe_ , but all her opponents have been roughly human-sized and most of them fresh off a prison ship. Wouldn't want to damage her too badly, waste all that time and effort and all those medical supplies. She might be less likely to die this way, which is obviously good, but the difference between an enemy who's as scared as you are and a monster twice your size who really, really wants to eat you is the difference between living with yourself afterwards or having to bury everything as deep as it can go until there’s no more room to bury anything new..

But he watches anyway. A guard who's been around long enough to know Shiro from before keeps the door open for him when he asks, on the condition he immediately kill any combatant that tries to make a run out of the pit before the fight ends. He leans against the frame and crosses his arms and studies the way she moves, watches for slip-ups or advice he can give her or sometimes to just marvel, a little bit, about how good she is with so little training. She's not just smart, she's clever, and she uses that as well here as she did back on the Castle finding things to modify for an advantage. They give her those daggers she used the first time instead of the more standard-issue curved swords, and when she really gets going she's so fast they blur in her hands. 

The thing is, the Champion _loves_ to watch. He has no equal, he's sure of that, but he recognized something in her when they fought, the false familiarity of meeting a kindred spirit for the first time, and watching her take down prey satisfies something deep in his gut. When she draws blood he salivates, when she takes a hit he growls, when she flings herself onto her prey from above he thrills. He wants to fight her again, clenching his fists against the desire to rush in and join the fray, wants the slow, steady burn of a real challenge and the triumph of conquering her. Claiming her, there in the pit, taking his prize and making her his.

When they drug him, it's easier to deal with the Champion, because lucid Shiro slips away quick and the Champion takes his place entirely. But they haven't been - because they haven't needed to, because he's getting used to it again, slipping into the role more easily, more often, losing himself - and in the buildup to a fight he wavers in and out. The lines get blurry, sometimes disappear entirely, and then it's just Shiro standing in the door with an itch under his skin, half-hard and ready to _hurt_.

The round, uncomfortably jovial-looking alien Pidge is fighting, one of the kind who look like man-sized tardigrades made of jelly, falls to the ground, bleeding thin, dark green blood from the cuts slashed all over his body. Pidge doesn't really do big killing blows; Shiro wonders if that makes it easier, if no one wound was _the_ fatal one. The Champion revels in her cruelty, the slow but inevitable death she gives them. They must know they're dying, and with the size and depths of those dagger wounds, must know it will take a while if she doesn't have mercy.

Pidge makes a show of reveling in the cheers, so eager to prove she's a good entertainer. So eager for Sendak to see her value beyond half of the equation that will give him human babies for whatever his reasons are. Smart, even if makes the Champion bristle, jealous of - one of them. Pidge doesn't need anyone but him to see her value; Sendak already has a pet. When she makes her way backstage, the Champion crowds her against the door, either to warn her off or get close enough to bite her, claim her. Drag her back out into the pit and - her cheeks are pink, eyes wild with adrenaline and triumph, chest heaving, and she'd _let_ him, roll over and bare her neck and submit. 

A guard pulls him back; the Champion growls, but he knows enough not to resist. Pidge watches him as he steps back, and as he's pushed into the pit, and the door closes on her heavy-lidded gaze.

*

"It could be one of the drugs they're giving me," Shiro says. "For virility, or something. Or the stuff that fucks with inhibitions, but that's usually in the cocktail they give me to make me more aggressive in the arena and I haven't had that for more than a week."

"Or adrenaline makes you horny and I'm a pretty convenient outlet, and you made yourself a whole alter-ego so you could give in to your instincts sometimes and not explode. It's okay."

Pidge watches him pace, propped up on a stack of pillows Shiro managed to get for her; she doesn't ask what he had to do for them, and he doesn't offer, or let her apologize for wishing for them. It makes the days she's not actively getting treatments easier, more comfortable to stay in bed and get over the worst of the muscle fatigue. Shiro's wearing a track in the floor, making her anxious, but she knows better than to suggest he stop. 

"That's not really - " Shiro shakes his head. "He probably knows you're not afraid of me like he wants you to be, what if he's trying a different tactic?"

"Making you so horny for me it's torture to be around me?" Shiro frowns, obviously not in the mood for her jokes, but...the jokes are all she has. Pidge sighs; she could at least try a little. "We already know you have some self-control when you're out of your head."

"Because I didn't chop your leg off."

"Yeah," Pidge says. "And you didn't kill me. I'm not worried."

"I wish you were," Shiro says. "There's a lot I can do even with enough self-control not to maim you."

"I know," she says. "And sorry, I still trust you." 

"Ugh," Shiro says, finally stops pacing and scrubs his hands over his face. "Don't say it like that."

"Please sit down?" Pidge asks; he doesn't, she didn't think he would, but he does lower his hands from his face and actually look at her. "This is really getting to you."

"How could you tell?"

The slump to his shoulders makes Pidge way too anxious; she and Shiro both talk a big game about how strong she is but if he gives up she's not so sure she won't right along with him. 

"Will you please come over here?" she asks again. This time he does, and she scoots over so he can sit next to her. He looks exhausted; she's been sleeping like the dead, has no idea if he's sleeping at all, or how restful it is. "Let's take it away from him."

"Take what?"

"If we fuck," she says, "now, because we want to, because it can be our choice, doesn't that take all the power out of it? We're both so afraid of when we have to start...breeding, it might help."

"Not much of a choice," he says.

"Here, instead of in a lab or Sendak's quarters or anywhere else, that's enough choice for me. Lucid and ourselves, not fucked on aphrodisiacs or wild from the arena, that's a choice. And you can say no, and I'll listen, and drop it, because I'm not Sendak."

"I don't want you to think you have to just because he got me all twisted up and you think it'll make me feel better," Shiro says. "Torturing me with what my body wants is kind of his whole thing, I can handle it."

"I know. I'm not you, I'm not _that_ self-sacrificing."

"Ouch," he says. "You might regret it."

"I'm not going to push, Shiro," she says, sits up a little so she can look him in the eyes. "I didn't regret it before, it helped, but that doesn't matter. You don't have to justify it if you want to say no."

"I don't know what I want," he says. "I don't want to hurt you, or take advantage, or end up doing something that helps him get in your head."

"I know," Pidge says. "I trust you. Don't worry about it, okay? You can forget I asked, you have enough to worry about."

Shiro turns a little, plants his hand on the bed on her other side so he's got her a little caged in. He looks so serious, weight of the world on his shoulders, too much and Pidge hasn't been very good at carrying her own burdens so he doesn't have to. She has to be better. She almost apologizes, but he wouldn't listen, wants that even less than the burden of making her less afraid, and anyway, he kisses her before she can say anything.

Pidge wraps her arms around him, loose, doesn't want him to feel like she's holding him in place even though she'd really, really like to, hold him and never let him leave. Make the guards drag them apart by force when they come to collect them for the fights. Shiro kisses her like he might want that, too, a little more desperate, frantic, than his usual soft, sweet kisses. Shiro rests his forehead on hers, pulls back a little; she manages not to chase his lips, but it's a close thing.

"I'm scared," he says, quiet, the first time he's said that out loud. Pidge's heart squeezes up in her chest; she can't possibly be as good at making Shiro feel safe as Sendak is at tearing him apart.

"I know," she says, "I'll protect you."

Shiro huffs out a weak laugh; she wants to protest, but he's right, there's not really anything she can do. She's asleep or in the medical wing or dealing with her own fights when Sendak's hurting him, and she can't stop what's coming any more than he can.

"I believe you," he says, and kisses her again, pushing into her space, pressing her back into the pillows. She should stop him, check in, but as long as he's just kissing her it's okay, it's okay. She can stop him if it goes any further, find out what he's thinking. He pulls back again, tips his forehead against hers again, like he doesn't want to go too far. "You make me feel safe."

"Good," she says, quiet, doesn't know what else to say. He's worrying her, now, worse than earlier, but you take good where you can get it, and it _is_ good if she can give him what he gives her.

"I want you," he says. "He needs me to hurt you, and I'm going to make it so easy for him, because I want it, and he _knows_."

"Okay," Pidge says, lifts one of her hands so she can pet his hair. He's easy for that, calms down like a big cat - she thinks, sometimes, about a black lion draped over her, as warm and heavy and docile as Shiro - and thankfully it works just as well now. Shiro sighs, scoots down a little so he can rest his head on her shoulder, and some of the tension melts out of him. He might be - she has to stop thinking because he made it through before he will again, or that it's easier for him because he knows what's coming. Pidge only has to be afraid of the unknown; Shiro knows exactly what to be afraid of.

"It was easier, before," Shiro says. "As soon as - I didn't have to feel things, I could just make myself be the Champion more and more the harder it got. He's not - I don't have him to keep from feeling guilty, he's there to keep me from the rest of it."

"I don't want to make it harder for you."

"I know," he says. 

The wall console beeps; the door slides open. Pidge doesn't want Shiro to fight like this, doesn't want him back in the mindset that scares him so much, but there isn't - maybe there is something she can do, she's just not thinking hard enough. She's not helpless. She sits up a little straighter, tries to school her face into something stern, something less on the verge of breaking down into tears.

"He's sick," she says. "Sendak wouldn't want him fighting like this, he'd just hurt himself. I'll go for both of us."

"Pidge," Shiro says, but she tightens her hand in his hair and pulls a little and he doesn't say anything else.

"Does he need a doctor?" Mertar asks. 

"No," Pidge says. "Just rest."

"Then nobody gives a shit. Neither one of you is fighting tonight anyway." She signals for the sentries and they set the trays of food down just inside the door rather than bringing them over. "Your brave sacrifice is noted."

The door slides closed, leaving them in the heavy silence. Shiro sighs, harsh puff of air against her neck.

"Don't do that," he says.

"I didn't want - "

"I know, I know. And I appreciate it, really. They don't like that, though, you caring enough to do that is a weakness and Sendak will punish you for it and I don't really want to see what that looks like. And invoking his name like you know what he wants might get back to him, and he definitely hates that."

"I just - " Pidge sighs. She's so tired. "I'm sorry."

"I mean, _I_ liked it," Shiro says; she can feel his lips curve into a smile against her skin, and since she can't really see his face when it's tucked into her neck like this, she doesn't have to worry about how sad his eyes probably are. The empty smiles are...hard. "I'm not hungry."

"I'm not gonna make you eat," she says. "I might make you get off me so I can."

Shiro starts to move and Pidge takes the risk of tightening the arm draped over his shoulder, holding him still. He doesn't panic, or struggle, or whatever else she was afraid of, just relaxes right back into her, less and less tense every minute. At least she can do this for him; she can't give him permission to let his darkness take over so nothing hurts, or get him out of here, or protect him at all apparently, but she can pet his hair and hold him close and soothe him.

"I didn't mean now," she says. "You make a good blanket."

"It's one of my best qualities," he says; his voice is shaky, and she can feel dampness on her neck. She was worried about making him cry but now that he is it's almost a relief. Maybe it'll help. Pidge runs her fingers through his hair, and holds him tight, and tries not to fall apart as he shakes.

*

The room is too small when he's alone, but it feels even smaller when Pidge is curled up tiny and fragile in the sheets sleeping off her latest round of treatment. She looked equal parts exhausted and afraid when the sentry escorted her back, like she has been every time for the last - Shiro pauses to count on his fingers - six quintants. She only goes every other day, so it's been eleven or twelve quintants since she first came back and told him _soon_. He's running out of time, and they still don't have a plan better than Pidge's impossible one to steal weapons and whatever she needs for his arm and fight their way out of a station that's basically a military complex. It's starting to look better every quintant.

Pidge comes back afraid, and falls asleep before she can tell him anything new, and all he can do until she wakes up is what he does when she's not here; push-ups, and crunches, and planks, and running in place, chasing away the worst thoughts and trying so, so hard to focus on the good, or on getting more of his memories back. He's picked up a fragment of bright lights overhead and his arms and legs strapped to a table, but he can't bring it into focus. And it's not like knowing he was in a lab or a hospital room or whatever is much of a revelation; he could have guessed that from the metal arm.

At least they don't expect her to fight on treatment days, so Shiro doesn't have to be a hypocrite and beg to fight in her place. But sometimes she's still asleep when he leaves, and he never comes back in any shape to talk to her, especially not if Sendak - if he has another performance after the main event. So it tugs at him all day, and in the morning when they're both lucid all she has to tell him is the same thing, every time, _a matter of quintants, not phoebs_. He doesn't know if the doctor keeps giving her such a useless estimate because he doesn't want her to know anything specific, or if it really is that vague. They might have longer than they think, or the guards might come for them any day, and it'll be time, and they won't be able to come back from it.

Shiro's running out of time to do what he thinks might be the right thing, in the light of day, when he isn't in the middle of falling apart. If he can make it easier - if he can do anything for her, anything at all, he will. No need to pretend otherwise just so she doesn’t feel bad for asking.

Pidge wakes up a little earlier than usual, yawns and stretches and sort of unfurls in the bed so she doesn't look quite so tiny as when she's curled in a tight ball like a kitten. Shiro brings her the lunch they keep bringing at the same time even knowing Pidge won't be there to eat it, and she makes it through almost half of the nearly-inedible mess it turns into once it's cooled. She collapses back in the pillows, smiles a sweet little tired smile up at him. He doesn't know how she can still do that, but...it's good. He's not looking forward to when she can't anymore.

"Hi," she says. "You're here."

"It's not time yet," he says. "You must be less tired today."

"I guess," she says, hands him her tray so he can go leave it with his by the door. He likes this, when she just lets him take care of her; it's easy, when it's little things, and she doesn't think she has to worry about what he wants. "There were only two injections today. But he had me on an IV and I was kind of sleepy the whole time, I thought it'd be worse."

"That's good. Or - if he's finished everything but those three..."

"He was really excited today," she says. "I told him I've been having killer cramps and his eyes lit up like he was a kid at Christmas."

Shiro pushes his hand under the blankets to rest on Pidge's lower stomach, almost on instinct. He didn't even know she was in pain.

"Is it bad?"

"Not right now," she says. "He gave me something for the pain, and he's adding something to my morning dosage. Apparently it's gonna get worse before it gets better."

"You know what I hear is good for cramps?" Shiro asks; Pidge tilts her head at him, and fuck that was a stupid way to start this conversation, but he's committed now. "Orgasms. You - you want some help with that?"

Pidge starts laughing; that's probably fair. And it's nice when she laughs, even if it's at him. Treatment days are hard for her; it's not easy to pretend what's coming isn't when she's sore from sensors and injections and exhausted from whatever they're giving her. 

"Is that your best pickup line?"

"It's better than yours," he says. "Hey, if you fuck me now it might be easier when you rape me next week."

Pidge stops laughing like someone hit the mute button, and her whole face falls. Why would he - what did he _think_ would come of that. It's too easy to talk to Pidge like he's talking to himself, sometimes, and it's easier for him to use the word, but he hasn't - not with her. She reaches up to cup his cheek, pull him out of his thoughts.

"That's not how I think of it," she says. "I want you to know that."

"It's - "

"You think of it however you need to," she says. "But you're not the one with the power."

"That doesn't matter," Shiro says.

"It does to me."

Shiro tilts his head and kisses her palm, rough and calloused like his now that she's fighting all the time. He can't explain why it makes sense to him, why he needs - he has to feel bad for the things Sendak makes him do, because Sendak won't, and because sometimes Shiro _likes_ it and that's just as bad. It's not like he can say 'I'm worried I'll enjoy it' (she probably knows that, anyway; she's good at seeing through him).

"Sorry to kill the mood," he says, and she laughs again, not as good as before, a little strained and a little thin, but it's good enough, it's real.

"There was no mood."

"You want me to start over? Seduce you the right way?"

"I want you to come here," she says, and wraps her arms around him as he moves to hover over her, cage her in with arms and legs. She draws him down into a kiss; he goes easily for her, likes to let her move him around. Her lips are dry and chapped but so are his; what would Sendak take from him if he asked for chapstick? "Stop thinking."

"Yes ma'am."

The first time he kissed Pidge - not the first time he stripped her naked or put his hands on her or made her come, but when he kissed her and for just a second felt everything else fall away - some part of him knew this was going to happen. The way she melts for him, like he’s making her forget to be scared, it’s powerful, makes him forget, too, and even if he wouldn’t give her anything she asked for to help her get through this in one piece it would have ended up here eventually. When either one of them could break down, sobbing and terrified, at any time, they need better, stronger methods of forgetting. She opens her mouth for him and he loses himself in the clumsy movements of her tongue as she tries to mimic the way he kisses her; he’s never had a thing for firsts but with Pidge it makes something warm and primal and possessive rise in his gut.

Pidge’s clever fingers find his zipper and he tenses; he knows she’s going to see him, knew he couldn’t exactly keep his shirt on, but he - he sits up, kneels over her, careful to bear his own weight so he doesn’t crush her. He has to do it, has to pick the moment, has to be in control, no matter how careful he knows she’d be. Shiro wants to show himself to her, show her what he survived, what she can survive. 

And it’s - it’s good, it’s okay, he likes the way she’s looking at him, that same mix of hunger and apprehension he’s seen from her in the arena. If he felt more like his body was his own he’d be preening like an ass, probably, for more of that attention. And he’s warned her, he’s mentioned the scars. It’s okay.

It takes a little doing to get his zipper undone on his own, not as flexible as he used to be, especially not with his Galra arm partially disabled, but finally his fingers catch and he drags it all the way down, slowly. He must be just _dripping_ with anxiety, though; when he takes his hands away and doesn’t move to push down his top, Pidge rests her hands on his waist and her eyes go a little soft. 

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says. “I just haven’t - I don’t like people seeing. No one’s seen me, not since - not like this.”

“We don’t - “

“I know,” he says. “I want to.”

“I hate when you interrupt me,” she says, gently petting his hips with her thumbs, smiling up at him so soft and reassuring.

Shiro laughs - not at her, not the way she’s going to take it, but because she went from zero to full-on grouchy so fast while still looking up at him like he’s something fragile. Handle with care, even when he pisses you off. Pidge pinches his hip, pretty hard; he can’t really blame her.

“Sorry,” he says. “You’re cute.”

Pidge raises her eyebrow and he leans down to kiss her again. Teasing her, laughing with her, always feels so fucking good and it’s driven enough of the anxiety back that it’s suddenly a thousand times easier to reach back and, with some wiggling, push the suit off his shoulders, lay himself bare to the waist. He’s not ready to pull away, let her look at him fully, but he does his best not to flinch when her hands start roaming. 

It’s a little bit of a relief, the way her touch makes him feel weak and shivery, the urge to push up into the careful sweep of her fingers; it’s not that there’s something broken in him that craves Sendak, it’s just that he’s starved for affection after a year of near-total isolation. Pidge’s hands are rough and his heart pounds every time her fingers skim over a different scar, and he never wants her to stop. This isn’t about - isn’t for him, it’s for her, he should be - but God it’s so good to feel like this with someone, anyone else.

Shiro pulls away, and Pidge chases him, nipping at his lips and bracing her hands on his shoulders so as he sits up he pulls her with him. He wraps his arm around her waist - his Galra arm, and he never misses how she shivers a little when he touches her with it, so fucking into it - and laughs against her lips and finally manages to break the kiss.

“I’m trying to show you my scars and you’re ruining a very meaningful moment,” he says, and she laughs. Her lips are so, so pink.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and leans back a little, wiggles until he loosens his arm so she has room. That’s nice, he could do with more of the wiggling. And more of the way she bites her lip when she looks him over, and her cheeks get redder, even if it kind of makes him want to hide again. He used to live for those reactions; he reaches for that, now, for twenty-year-old Shiro who knew exactly how hot he was. It slips out of his grasp, but - he tries. “God.”

“Yeah, it’s - “

“You’re _gorgeous_.”

Shiro’s skin is prickling into goosebumps under her eyes, that classic Holt see-right-through-you stare, and he can feel her gaze like more hands on him, running over the scar on his shoulder, the barely-there two-inch stretch of pink that she gave him. It’s - oh, it’s not her eyes, it’s her thumb. He’s doing great.

“I’d do something romantic like kiss all your scars,” Pidge says, quiet like a secret, like she has to make sure it’s only for the two of them even when there’s no one else around. “But I think you’d hate it. And they’ll come get you for the arena eventually.”

“And you’d hate to cockblock yourself with a romantic gesture.”

“I mean, I would,” she says, “if you wanted it, I would.”

That’s too sweet for words so Shiro just kisses her again; she sighs into it like she’s been waiting her whole life for something and she’s finally getting it. She bites his lip and the little bit of pain sparks down his spine; he bites hers and she shivers for him. Pidge keeps petting the scar on his shoulder with one hand, while the other slips down his chest, pausing to toy with a nipple - he doesn’t really feel much there anymore, at least not anything less intense than clamps, but he leans into it anyway, because he _wants_ to. Sendak’s taken so much from him, everything, but if he can pretend - 

Pidge keeps dragging her hand down, over the scarred planes of his stomach, to push inside his suit and wrap around his soft cock. He can’t pretend, of course he can’t.

“It’s not you,” he says, before she reacts, too defensive too quick. It takes him more and more, more sensation, more intensity, but he’d thought - it doesn’t matter. Pidge lets go of him, rubs soothing circles with her fingers in his pubic hair, around his lower stomach. He rocks his hips a little, pushes into her too-light touches. “It just - there are tricks. Pain, adrenaline, a few of the things they give me for the arena. But with touch...it takes a lot.”

“It’s okay,” she says, punctuates it with a quick, soft kiss. “We’re going to kill him.”

Shiro laughs, a little, against her lips when she kisses him again. It’s not what he was expecting, but more reassuring than if she just tried to soothe him, or told him for the thousandth time they don’t have to do this. She palms his cock again, and when he’s not distracted by anxiety her gentle touch feels so good, shit. It’s been so long since he’s had gentle.

Pidge loops her other arm around his neck, pulling herself even closer to him even though the angle must be rough on her wrist as she plays with him. Shiro takes the opportunity to slide his arm up her back, make her take more of her own weight so he can unzip her suit. He won't be able to get it off, not in the position they're in, and he's not ready to make her move but he needs - skin-to-skin, human contact, even though his flesh hand is braced on the bed and it's only the metal arm he can push inside her open zipper. Close enough, almost. The callouses on Pidge's fingers catch and drag on the soft skin of his cock and he's still not getting very hard but he never, ever wants her to stop touching him, slow heat building low and steady in his gut.

But soon enough she gets tired of the half-dressed bullshit and squirms out from under him, scoots back just enough she can get her bodysuit off and only almost kick him in the face. She leans back on her elbows, flushed all the way down her chest, a little breathless but grinning at him and she's just so _Pidge_ , eager and challenging and not the littlest bit awkward or shy about what she wants, what she's going to get, and Shiro's blood roars in his ears. He hurries out of his own suit, revealing the scars on his hips and thighs but now that she's seen the worst of it he doesn't care. He doesn't miss the way her eyes narrow as she looks, though; _we're going to kill him_.

Pidge looks at him in a way that makes him actually want to be looked at, to flex and preen and show himself off even though all he can show her is this broken body, Sendak's work, not really himself. And part of him wants to let her look forever, to still be kneeling naked in front of her when the guards come to take him away, to make them drag him off the bed because he's just not ready to stop yet, to watch her eyes drift up and down and her teeth dig into her lower lip until he forgets, for a little while, what's wrong with him. But part of him is aching for her, and that part wins when she spreads her legs a little, such a subtle movement he's not sure she knows she's doing it, and all he can do is crawl forward and bury his face in her cunt. She's a mess for him already, and when she gasps and tilts her hips up at the first touch of his tongue he feels like he's drowning in her.

It's been - shit, seven years, almost, since the last time he went down on a woman, but he's a killer cocksucker and the principle is the same; he licks over her in broad strokes, tasting, exploring, listening for what makes her gasp and whine and paying attention when she bucks and squirms and tries to get away or hump his face. Pidge is pushy, demanding, wraps her fingers in his hair and hooks her legs over his shoulders and moves him around, and if she decides this was a mistake and he never gets to make her sit on his face and ride him until his nose breaks he might die.

And hey, turns out it's not just pain or adrenaline or twenty minutes of increasingly frustrated jerking off that gets him hard. Pidge yanks his hair, hard, when he teases her clit with the tip of his tongue, the best feeling in the fucking universe, so he tortures her a few more times even though she's trying to squirm away. And when he takes pity on her and moves back down to press sloppy kisses against her hole, the way she whines is even sweeter than the pain of his hair being pulled. Shiro works his hips against the mattress, so good to be half-hard and eager like this with no urgency, and pushes his tongue inside where she's dripping. He's thought a lot - a lot - about how needy she was before, the way her cunt practically sucked his fingers in and begged for more, so he just pushes his nose against her until he can hardly breathe and fucks his tongue in as deep as he can.

Pidge tastes good, so fucking good, coating his tongue and smearing over his chin, but there's something else, too, something thick and plastic-y. Lube, it reminds him of lube more than anything, and he's struck by how little he knows about what they've been doing to her when they drag her away in the mornings. He almost sits up and asks, has to know every single shitty thing so he knows just how much to make them answer for, but she was laughing and happy and now she's rocking her hips into him and moaning and he's not going to ruin the mood making her relive something she hasn't wanted to talk about. Not when he can curl his tongue and make her squeal and surround himself with the taste and the smell of her and let everything else fall away.

"Shiro," she whines. "Shiro, Shiro, Shiro, fuck." Her cunt clenches around him like she's trying to pull him in further, like she's trying to stretch out his tongue; there's an idea. Maybe if he's really good he can ask one of their fucking butcher-doctors to spruce him up a little. Until then he pulls back, takes the opportunity to catch his breath, and pushes two of his cybernetic fingers inside of her. Pidge moans so low and throaty it's almost more of a purr, deep and satisfied. She's so vocal, so responsive; it’s too embarrassing to ask, when he needs it, for Pidge to tell him he's good, a good boy, doing a good job, but he can hear it in every little hitched breath and bitten-off gasp and needy whimper. He's being so good for her, he can be so good for her. Pidge tugs on his hair, works her hips into a rhythm, fucking herself on his fingers just how she wants, and he curls them just a little, matches her thrust for thrust, and wraps his lips around her pretty little clit.

She doesn't try to squirm away now, all warmed up for him, and when he sucks as much of her as he can get into his mouth she moans his name again, sweet and reverent. It doesn't take her long to come, bucking and gasping and doing her damn best to break his fingers. Shiro doesn't pout when she stops pulling him closer and starts pushing him away, but not because he doesn't want to. But Pidge is a wreck, pink all over, breathing hard, hair a complete rat's nest from the pillows, and he didn't get to watch her fall apart when he was buried between her legs and now it's all he wants to look at.

"You need a break?"

Pidge shakes her head a little frantically. "No, no, come on."

Shiro pushes up to his knees, cock hanging heavy and hard between his legs. Pidge's eyes slip down his chest like they're magnetically drawn to it, and her cheeks get, impossibly, even pinker. When she notices Shiro smirking, she rolls her eyes, and laughs, and Shiro laughs with her. He's not used to feeling this good, he'd forgotten how, and he'd definitely forgotten how it feels to want someone's eyes on him like this. He strokes himself a few times, with his Galra hand even though he kind of hates the way the metal feels against soft skin, because Pidge's eyes narrow and her breathing picks up and he thinks maybe he should hate how hot she is for this part of him but…he doesn't. At least someone likes it.

Pidge spreads her legs wider as he crawls forward, as wide as they can go, and it's just enough room for his hips. She's so small, he's never been into that before but he could hide her from the world just by lying on top of her and that, apparently, really does it for him.

"Let me know if it's too much, okay?" he says.

"No such thing," she says, all bravado like she knows what she's doing, and he laughs a little.

"I've had complaints," he says.

"I'll let you know," she says, "promise. But do you have any idea how big a speculum designed for a Galran vagina is?"

Shiro should maybe push back on that a little, can't - not the time, it's not the time. He won't punish her for being too casual about it, joking too easy, won't derail the whole thing to make her deal with it more seriously when the whole point is to give them both something good to hold onto. So he just kisses her, always a good choice, even if it means he has to hunch his back a little awkwardly when he guides his cock inside her. He moves slowly, but whether or not she was just joking about giant alien specula he barely meets any resistance, just her soft, wet heat drawing him in. Pidge's mouth drops open as he rocks into her, more and more until it feels ridiculous to keep trying to kiss her. Shiro sits back up on his knees, watches the last couple inches of his thick cock disappear into her greedy cunt.

"Good," Pidge gasps, rocking her hips just a little, like she's testing how full she is. Good, yeah, shit, she feels like heaven. "Don't - ooh, don't ever move."

"Too much?"

She clenches around him, tight enough to take his breath away, and he groans a little bit like he's dying. He might be dying.

"No," she says, finally opens her eyes, all hazy with want. "Want to feel like this forever."

The heat building in Shiro's cock surges, makes him dizzy with it, with how much she wants him and how good she feels wiggling her hips. He grabs her around the waist, so small his fingers almost touch around her, and pulls her forward so she's splayed in his lap. Pidge yelps, a little, and laughs, wild and giddy with it.

"It's going to get a _lot_ better," he says, and she laughs more, and he can _feel_ her laughing and it's getting hard to remember where they are and why they're doing this and everything that's happened and what's coming next. Pidge is gorgeous, in all her gangly, frizzy, cackling glory, and he'd forgotten how fun this could be, how uncomplicatedly good he could feel. He's going to fuck her until she can't see straight, make her come like nobody's ever come before, just to thank her for giving him this.

Pidge whines when he pulls out, gasps like he's knocked the wind right out of her when he thrusts back in quick and hard. He fucks her like that at first, pulls out slow, so slow his thighs tremble from keeping control, lets her feel every single inch of him while she throws her head back and whines, and when he's almost out, just the tip of his cock spreading her flushed, dripping cunt open, he thrusts back in quick and hard so her whole body jostles with the force. Sweat builds slick on his skin, and hers, and it's all he can smell, sweat and sex thick in the air. 

Part of him wants to do this forever, watch Pidge fall apart piece by piece like this, but it's just too much, the slow drag and the sight of his cock slick and sticky as it slides out and how perfectly the head holds her open for him, the frantic push and the way she gasps and the instinct to just keep up that pace and pound her into the mattress, the immense control it takes to pull out slow again, torturous, make her whine and writhe. Shiro slips one hand around to support her back, hitches her up into a deeper arch - she curses at him, clenches up, hands twisting in the sheets so hard he thinks they might rip - and leans forward to brace himself on the bed. Giving in to instinct is dangerous, losing control here, of all places, terrifying, but there's something base, primal, pure animal nipping at his heels and Shiro closes his eyes, trusts himself, and lets it go.

The bed is bolted to the floor but it still shakes with the force of Shiro's fucking, shivering underneath them. Shiro holds her tighter, closer, leans harder on the hand bracing himself, trying to push deeper, deeper, needs more. Pidge babbles, half-formed curses and pleas and Shiro's name so sweet and desperate on her lips; she's so wet for him he'd swear there's a splash every time their hips meet. She braces one hand on the headboard, grabs at his arm with the other, sweaty fingers slipping on the metal. The slap of skin on skin and the filthy wet noises of his cock moving inside her and the ache of his thighs and her cute little tits bouncing with the force and Shiro's lost in it, mindless with want. Everything that matters in the universe is singing through his veins, starting where their bodies are connected.

"Please," she gasps, clutching at his arm so hard he's half-convinced she'll scratch the metal. "Fuck, please."

Shiro sits back a little, can't fuck her as deep but doesn't need to brace himself, can free his arm and push his thumb against her cunt, a little too hard maybe but she groans like she's never felt so good so he keeps up the pressure. He lets the force of his thrusts rock her against him, and she has no leverage but she tries to push her hips back to meet him. There's nothing Shiro wants more than to give her everything she needs, and almost as soon as he sets his fingers vibrating he gets exactly what he's after. Pidge wails, louder than when she takes hits in the arena, cunt spasming around Shiro's cock so good he swears he sees stars. He fucks her through it, watches her face for any indication she's too sensitive but keeping up his pace because he wants - he needs - he's so fucking close.

"Pull - pull out," she gasps, and the animal inside is furious but he does what she asks, focusing on the way her face screws up a little, petulant, like she's not ready to let him go. So why did - right, shit, she's full of alien fertility drugs and neither one of them knows what "not ready yet" really means. They both groan when he slips out all the way, but there's a string of her come shining between the head of his cock and she's open, gaping, because of him and his cock's so filthy wet when he wraps his still-vibrating hand around it there's barely any friction. It doesn't take long for him to come, watching her cunt flutter because it wants him back so badly, raking his eyes over the flushed skin and fading finger marks near her waist and her eyes on his cock, sleepy but intent. The animal thrills at the sight of his come on her skin, her pale thighs and her red cunt and their come mixing together as it drips towards the bed, and when Shiro moves just enough to collapse next to, rather than on, her, he's all but purring. He nuzzles into her neck, and she lifts her arm just enough to pet his hair. 

"I'm going to die in the arena tonight," he says, "because I can't feel my legs."

"As long as they correctly credit me for defeating you," Pidge says, her voice all rough from how beautifully loud she'd been.

"All hail the new Champion," he murmurs, kisses her neck; she tastes like sweat. "You good?"

"Great," she says. 

"Can you reach my suit?"

"Uh," she says, "I can, but I won't. Not done looking at you."

Shiro doesn't hate that as much as he should; something in the back of his mind insists, sharp and loud, that he should cover up before she changes her mind, but he leans hard into the part of himself that gets off on being admired. For a little bit, anyway.

"If I'm naked when they come get me, they'll make me fight like that."

"Might make you more intimidating."

"Maybe," he says, and leans up to kiss away her laugh. He does need to get dressed, go fight, ignore the ache in his muscles and the ache to stay close to her and keep them in good favor, needs to put on enough of a show they won't start punishing him - punishing Pidge, more likely, and making him stand in the shame of his failure to keep her safe. Needs to keep pushing to get them out, to remember how he got out, to - there's so much he needs to do, but Pidge is holding him close and it's so easy to ignore all that, to just do what he wants.


	6. iv: Lance

Most of the time, sitting on the bridge makes Lance feel small, alone on a massive, cosmic scale. It's always a gamble to come up here to think; sometimes he'll actually clear his head, but mostly he'll stumble back to his room homesick and heartsick and confused. It's working okay right now, though, trying to pick out every single color that makes up the empty space between the stars to drive everything else out of his head. Keith is mad at everybody and chafing against every responsibility Hunk tries to push on him, and there's nothing Lance can do about it. Their alliance with the Marmora hasn't turned up anything useful - anything at all - about Pidge, or Shiro, or Sendak, and there's nothing Lance can do about that, either. 

There's a galaxy or a nebula or something - Lance always asks about the swirling masses of gas and stars, and never remembers when someone tells him which is which - drifting across his field of vision, way out in the distance, yellows and greens and some pink breaking up the endless blues and blacks and deep, deep purples. It's pretty. The team isn't going to fall entirely apart and it won't be on Lance if it does.

"Lance?"

Lance's heart starts beating faster; he's too tired to get frustrated by his body's lack of chill so he just ignores it, turns to face Allura. "Hey."

"Can't sleep?"

"Guess not," he says. "Tell me you weren't up debriefing this whole time?"

Allura shakes her head. "Kolivan retired a little over a varga ago, I've been taking a walk because I don't feel much like sleeping myself."

"You doing okay?"

"I don't know," Allura says, comes to stand next to him by the window, leans against the railing. "There's still a part of me that expects Kolivan to turn on us, for the whole thing to be a trap. Alteans used to be friendly with the Galra, so I'm certain I've been in rooms with Galra who didn't want to kill me before Kolivan, but telling myself that doesn't help as much as I'd like. I'll think I'm doing better, that I've stopped letting fear rule me, but then Keith has an outburst or Kolivan bangs his fist on the table and I'm - well, I'm not very good at it."

"That's rough," Lance says. "Keith's putting everyone on edge right now, even Hunk, so maybe you're not as bad as you think."

"Maybe," she says.

"Any news?" Lance asks; there's probably plenty, but she knows what he means, and she shakes her head.

"They haven't managed to make contact with their man on Sendak's crew for over a phoeb, and his reports were sparse before that. Sendak's still entirely off the radar and they haven't picked up anything about humans of Pidge or Shiro's description in any of their other intel. Same as always, and they can't push much harder because their resources are stretched thin. As are ours."

Lance sighs. "Are we having this argument again? I really don't want to have this argument again."

"It's not an argument, it's a discussion. It's good to keep up a dialogue about our priorities, even if the conclusion is always the same."

"You'll have to find another pilot for the Red Lion if you want a different conclusion, Princess, Keith's already got one foot out the door."

"I'm aware," Allura says. "But we have an entire universe to think about, at some point we _have_ to let go of the idea that two people, no matter how special to us they may be, are worth more than the billions of lives at stake in the war against the Galra."

"It's my fault we all ended up here," Lance says. "Keith would've kidnapped Shiro from the Garrison anyway, and they probably would've found Blue, but she wouldn't have woken up for them. And I'm the one who convinced Hunk to sneak out, I'm the one who decided we should go bother Pidge, I'm the one who insisted we all go to Shiro's crash site. Blue woke up for me, and I’m the one who piloted us through the wormhole. If I don't find out what happened to them I'm going to spend the rest of my life driving myself crazy not knowing what I got them into."

"It all might have ended up that way anyway," Allura says. "You were all destined - "

"Sure," Lance says. "Maybe. But it happened the way it did, and I have to live with it, and I can't if we stop trying. We've put aside the search dozens of times to help people that need it more urgently, we'll do it again when we need to. But we can't just let go of it."

"I understand," she says, rests her hand over his on the railing. She's so soft, and her hands are always cold. Lance doesn't offer to warm them up for her, just accepts the comfort she wants to give him. He's learning. "I just don't want everyone losing sight of the greater battle."

"We won't," he says, "because you'll keep reminding us. You're good at making us keep our heads on straight."

"Sometimes," Allura says, with a little laugh. Lance would get a whole new lecture if Allura knew how much of a priority making her laugh is for him. Something settles in him, the peace he was searching the stars for gently wrapping around his brain like a blanket, and maybe he feels a little guilty that it comes to him so easily when Keith is falling apart and Hunk and Allura are so stressed they can't see straight and Coran's run thin between piloting Green and maintaining the Castle and Pidge and Shiro are going through whatever it is they're going through, but guilt's useless and he sets it aside, at least for now.

"I'm going to bed," he says, slips his hand out from under hers and instantly misses the contact. He resists reaching back out to touch her, just smiles a little lopsided smile and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Don't stay up too late, okay? You deserve to rest, too."

Allura just nods, and turns away, and Lance leaves her silhouetted against the stars, hunched over the railing from the weight of the universe on her shoulders, so sad and so lovely his heart aches.


	7. Three

Vonka seems tense; as much as Pidge hates when he's cheerful, tense might be worse. She's never seen him like this before, so she doesn't know what to expect - what he might take out on her, what mistakes he might make due to stress. Of course, if he fucks up and accidentally poisons her, that would solve a lot of her problems.

"My cramps haven't been so bad," she says, and he just stares at her, like that was a weird thing to say, like it's not always the first question he has for her. He stares, and crosses his arms, and taps his foot impatiently, and Pidge sighs and pulls off her overshirt, wiggles out of her bodysuit, steps into the sonic shower for a dobosh or two. Keeping prisoners clean isn't enough of a priority for the Galra to give them regular access to showers, but so far every time one of them has been about to touch her she's had to bathe first. Be a shame if one of them got their hands dirty.

Hop up on the table, lie back, stick her feet in the stirrups; it's routine enough now her body just does it all on its own, no need for the brain to get involved. Vonka straps her in, forearms bound to the table and feet to the stirrups, thick straps just barely on the line between too tight and painful. He spreads her cunt open with rough fingers, pushes the first sensor inside, too thick and barely any lube but at least it's short, and moves on to attach nodes to the insides of her thighs, her wrists, between her breasts.

Pidge sighs, tips her head back against the flat, useless cushion. Once he taps the button on his terminal to vacuum-seal the nodes (and drive the tiny needles in the center of each one into her skin, leaving pinprick wounds that'll itch all day) all there is to do is lie here while he takes his endless readings. It'd be nice if they'd give her a book - maybe she could convince someone she needs to learn Galran so she can teach the baby - or at least something to fidget with, but that'll never happen. Sometimes it hits her, how weird it is she's calm enough to be bored, when everything happening to her all the time is so horrifying, but it's probably better than the panicked, screaming alternative. It worries Shiro, she knows, she's seen the faces he makes when she jokes too casually about something awful (and if he, of all people, thinks her dark humor is too dark…), but he has his Champion and she has her impenetrable wall between the terrified part of her brain and the part she needs to keep going, and they're both doing the best they can.

Machinery beeps, Vonka hums and types and hums some more, Pidge shivers in the cold air. Routine. A different beep, and the nodes detach themselves. More humming, more typing. What had him so stressed when she showed up? Maybe she's not making as much progress as he hoped, and they can draw this out longer. Maybe Sendak ordered him to do something he's not okay with, but that's - she doesn't want to think about Vonka's limits and how far you'd have to go to push them. Another low, thoughtful hum, and he's sliding the sensor out of her, replacing it with one of his fingers. She's pretty sure he's not actually testing anything, just touching her because he can. He slides his finger out, and rubs it against his thumb, then separates them so there's a string of Pidge's wetness between finger and thumb. He hums, again, and Pidge hates him.

The door slides open. The first few times, Pidge tried to cover herself up, struggle against her bonds and close her legs. She had bruises from the straps for days, Vonka refused to heal them, and it was always just some sentry with a message or nurse with a question or someone else who couldn't possibly care less about a naked human.

"Are we ready?"

Oh. Someone who does care about a naked human, and naked Pidge in particular. Sendak takes up most of the doorway, huge and intimidating as always; she knows better, but her thighs still twitch like she can hide herself. It's not like it matters, not like she'd be able to stop him from looking or touching or taking whatever he wants.

"We are," Vonka says. "Today's readings are right where they should be. I don't need to make the call for a few doboshes, I thought you might like to examine her first."

"Excellent," Sendak says, coming to stand behind the exam table. Pidge doesn't give in to the urge to look up at him, see just how big he looks from this angle, see how he's looking at her. The looming is enough, and his hands on her when he grabs her breasts and squeezes, tighter and tighter until she gasps. He laughs, and loosens his grip, but keeps playing with her, pinching her nipples and cupping her tits and she focuses all her energy on not squirming because that's what he wants from her.

"The gestation period has been shortened significantly," Vonka says. "Not quite as low as we hoped, but ideally the modification will be passed on to the next generation and we can keep pushing."

Sendak lets go of her reddening nipples and slides his hands down her stomach, sweeps them over her lower belly like maybe he knows what humans look like pregnant, like he knows where she'll swell and get round and he's thinking about it already. Ugh.

"And we've almost entirely reversed that absurd fertility cycle, so she'll be fertile a much higher percentage of the time. The research time has developed a number of quintant-of treatments to increase fertility and arousal as well, so she can be brought to peak fertility nearly any time you want."

The tension is leaving Vonka's shoulders and jaw as he talks; Sendak must be approving, so pleased with every gross thing he's done to her. Of course he would be. Sendak rakes his claws over her hips, not quite hard enough to draw blood, and leans farther over her so he can slip his hand between her legs, fondle her. Is he even looking for anything, other than a reaction? His palm is rough, and too warm, and Pidge can feel herself getting wetter in response to his touch.

"Will she bear a litter?"

Vonka shakes his head. "Too fragile. I'd like to see a successful birth, first, see how all the changes we've already made affect her. And if the child is a female, we can take more risks with this one."

"Not too many," Sendak says, presses his hand more firmly against her. She's not going to rock into his touch, she's not going to enjoy this even a little. "My Champion's fond of her, and he can be such a handful without proper motivation."

“Of course, sir,” Vonka says. Pidge is pretty sure he rolls his eyes, but maybe she imagined it because it seems unlikely Sendak would just let that slide. If he did, that might be…something, might be Sendak too fixated on Shiro and losing respect. Or just someone annoyed at his boss.

Sendak grinds the heel of his palm against her clit, rough, too hard, and Pidge can’t stop herself yelping and trying to wiggle away. Goddammit. At least he finally stops touching her, once he gets his reaction, pulls his hand away and straightens up and steps back so he’s not looming as much.

“Make the call.”

Across from Pidge, a terminal pops up, nearly the size of the wall. Her fingers twitch a little; she wants to play with their computers so bad. The screen goes blank, and then a video feed starts playing. A Galra woman - maybe, there’s so much variation among the Galra - is centered on screen, face mostly obscured by a dark hood pulled low over her eyes, hair dry and stringy and white. She kind of looks like a cartoon witch, and when she greets Sendak and Vonka her voice is nasal and scratchy. Maybe Pidge misbehaved without noticing and they’ve brought someone in to turn her into a frog as punishment.

Vonka starts right in repeating what he told Sendak already; it’s not any easier to hear the second time.

“You’ve done better than expected,” she says, and they both bow. So she’s an important witch.

“I’ll be moving on to the next phase shortly,” Sendak says. “I see no reason to believe it won’t go well, they’ve already proven their willingness to mate.”

As cold as she is it’s easy to feel her face heat up, the rush of blood to light up her face and chest so intense she can almost feel it in her veins. Gross.

“And then you’ll be returning my experiment to me.”

“As promised,” Sendak says. “Although I wish you would come here to continue your research, it’s - “

“You’ll have your toy back when I’m finished with him, Commander,” the woman snaps. “And in the meantime you can keep yourself busy with this one. I’ve sent some druids to observe, and they will escort your Champion back when they leave.”

“No!” Pidge shouts, tries to sit up and only succeeds in hurting her arms. “You can’t!”

“I see you still don’t teach them any manners,” the woman says.

“You know how I like them,” Sendak says. “Spirited.”

“Empathy,” Pidge says, scrambling. “You know how we - the caring thing. Humans form, uh, empathic bonds. And if a baby doesn’t form those bonds with its parents in the womb, it'll be…weak. Um, weaker."

"Did you know this?"

"Not specifically," Vonka says, "but we do have research that indicates humans are healthier in groups. Separation is certainly a risk, though I would want to study further before I recommended a decision based on this."

"We need the offspring strong enough to use as a subject," Sendak says. "A weak child is an unacceptable waste."

"You should have thought of that before you moved forward with incomplete data," she says. "You have one phoeb to come up with an acceptable solution. If you don't, I'll simply take the whole family after the birth until I've finished my work with the Champion."

"Yes, Haggar," Sendak says, and bows. The screen goes blank; Pidge braces herself as much as she can, not entirely sure what the punishment for speaking out of turn to someone who outranks Sendak is. She hopes it's bad, because she hopes she embarrassed him. Made him regret showing her off like this, rethink it the next time.

Sendak leans over again, low enough their noses almost touch. His breath is awful; she hopes he doesn't kiss Shiro, when they're together. For a lot of reasons, but he really, really stinks.

"You and I have some goals in common," he says. "You'd do well to let me handle pursuing them."

Having something in common with Sendak is going to keep her up at night. Gross. He's wrong, anyway; Pidge doesn't care if Shiro gets taken away from Sendak, as long as he doesn't leave her behind. Leaving is their best chance of escape; Shiro can fly anything, and there would be a lot fewer Galra to take out than on the station. And all she has to do to make it happen is screw up their research for a phoeb. While she's strapped to a table with six different machines taking readings and nobody asking her anything. Still.

"Sedate her," Sendak says, straightening up. "I wouldn't want her to have another outburst and hurt herself."

"Of course, sir," Vonka says, and Sendak turns on his heels and leaves; the room feels strangely empty without him.

*

It's objectively bad that Pidge gets so tired after her treatments, both because it's painfully clear whatever they're doing to her is intense, and because they both need to be at their best to escape. Whatever ends up happening might happen in a split second, and if he needs Pidge's tech skills and she's too sleepy to think straight, or if her limbs are sluggish and he needs to carry her, or if he has to waste time waking her up or dragging her out of bed or urging her to move, if she can't carry a weapon, if, if, if…they're screwed.

But sometimes he's so fucking grateful for the exhaustion that knocks her on her ass. Some days she comes back like she did today, pale and shaken and clinging a little too tightly to his shirt while he helps her into bed, and she insists on staying awake to relive it all for Shiro because she thinks there's something he needs to know, and it's too much and she breaks down. There's something in her eyes when she gets that kind of afraid, when she forgets stoic isn't the only way to be strong, a little shadow of shame and rage behind the tears and there's nothing he can do about it. Better she sleep than hate herself, better she sleep than stay awake and watch Shiro fail to help.

And it's good she's asleep right now, because Shiro's head is swimming, jaw and shoulders tight with tension, all the telltale signs of a devastating flashback but it won't take the last step and claim him. Too many memories associated with the name Haggar, maybe, too many fragments of stringy white hair and a voice that scraped raw against his nerves, too many shadowy figures in dark, hooded robes. No single one can break through and take him down, but he can't manage to fight them all off entirely.

Something's been tugging at him, though, one specific image, and since he's just going to sit here and comb through Pidge's hair while she uses his lap for a pillow, and since he doesn't have to worry about her seeing him like this, he tips his head back and closes his eyes and reaches.

The too-bright light overhead is swinging just a little, casting weird shadows over Shiro's body. Everything is numb, so numb he feels like he's floating, looking at himself from the outside. There are thick straps over his chest and waist, his thighs, ankles, his left wrist; he can't feel how tight they are but when he tries to lift his arm to test the give he barely moves at all. His right arm isn't strapped down, but he can't move it, and it must be raised over his head because he can't see it, but - oh. Right. Sharp teeth, and blood everywhere, and his own agonized screaming in his ears, and a pair of sentries dragging him across the dirt, and pain, and pain, and pain.

Someone's standing at his right shoulder, masked and hooded, and Shiro's suddenly grateful for the numbness because they're working thin wires into the open wound of his shoulder, a network that kind of looks like it might if whatever beast tore his arm off somehow left the veins behind. Their fingers are nimble and quick, steady as they push their wires into his flesh, and Shiro nearly pulls himself out of the memory thinking of Pidge when she tinkers.

"The quintessence delivery system is in place, Haggar," says the masked figure, low and almost robotic. "I'll move on to preparing the attachments to the nervous system, but I'd prefer if he could feel it. Otherwise I'll need to stop frequently to run tests."

"He's fragile," says a voice somewhere off to the side, hoarse and scratchy. "He won't remain conscious."

"That's acceptable. I just need his body's natural responses."

Shiro only notices the faint humming in the air when it stops; one second the room is quiet, the next it's silent. He doesn't have long to think about it, though, because the numbness starts dissipating and his mind whites out from the raw wound and the foreign metal in his body and he can't help but scream. He's so, so tired of the sound of his own screams, but he doesn't have to worry about that for long. He blacks out before the masked figure can even begin the next phase of their horrifying project.

Pidge is a warm, solid weight on his legs, easy to focus on when he's more than ready to be back in their room and not wherever that was. He's not as bad off as he could be, not shaking or locked up or breathing so hard he gets dizzy. He can't quite make himself open his eyes, but that's his choice, more comfortable in the dark for now. Pidge's hair is soft around his fingers, where it isn't tangled. It's a little like having an emotional support animal, an overgrown cat. Or a little lion.

Maybe she can fight off the panic nipping at his heels, trying to get in and take over. He has no idea the extent of the work Haggar did to him, and now she wants more? More, and to take him away from this place where he knows the rules, where he's an expert at the game. And if she's based somewhere else, and he only escaped after she gave him this arm, he must not have escaped from Sendak's ship at all. Trying to remember how he got out has been a massive waste of time, and not just because he hasn't succeeded. Haggar might have less security, might be an easier escape, but she's the Emperor's second, and odds are her base is also his.

It's not hopeless. It can't be hopeless, because if it's hopeless the best thing to do is just give in to the worst of himself, stop fighting it and just be Sendak's perfect pet. He's good at that; it's easy. He can live just fine like that, nice room, regular meals, and when he's the Champion the highs of the fights and the fucking are uncomplicatedly good. He can do what he has to do, run out the clock until Haggar takes him and he dies on her table or becomes a mindless weapon of war. So much easier, so much less exhausting.

Pidge whines a little in her sleep; Shiro opens his eyes, finally, to see her face screwed up a little and his fist clenched in her hair, white-knuckled, probably pulling. He lets go quick, pets her gently. She looks so young when she's sleeping, as young as she is. It's easy to forget, watching her fight to live in the arena or not break down in their room. It doesn't matter whether it's hopeless or not - giving up is not an option.

*

Pidge's heart is racing, blood roaring in her ears, and she can't sit still for anything. She's been like this since lunch; they don't usually bring pills midday, but Pidge's medication changes so frequently she's stopped questioning it. Probably not the smartest choice, but pretty essential to her survival. She regretted not asking about it when Shiro frowned at his little pill cup for several minutes before he sighed and swallowed them down; she regretted it half an hour later when she started to feel like there were ants crawling under her skin. She regretted it most when she complained to Shiro and his brow knit together, eyes all soft with concern but mouth set in a firm line. He wouldn't tell her what he was so upset about, just pulled her into his workout routine so she could work out the excess energy.

She regrets it now, alone in Sendak's bedroom, anxious and fidgety with no idea what's going on and no real way to calm down. Shiro had been rubbing her sore muscles down when the guards came for them, frowning at her about overdoing it with that same upset face, more anxious than disappointed. He might have been right about overdoing it, because the idea of dropping into a few push-ups now to distract herself is overwhelming; all she can do is let her mind race as fast as it wants to, what Sendak might be up to, why he would have separated them once they got to his quarters, what he's doing to Shiro, why the arena drugs if they aren't going to fight, why, why, why.

The door opens; Pidge shouldn't be relieved, because it means whatever's going to happen is about to happen and it's not going to be good, but at least she doesn’t have to wait and wonder anymore. Haxus enters and hands her a couple of small, nondescript pills and a glass of water.

"Take them, and undress," he says.

"No," Pidge says, just to say it, to know she's said it, to see what happens. She sleeps easier if she remembers to protest sometimes.

"I'd prefer not to force you," he says. "It won't be pleasant for either of us."

"What are they?'

"Aphrodisiacs, I believe. Stop wasting time."

Pidge knew, when they were brought here instead of the arena, what was likely to happen, but 'time to get pregnant' could mean any number of things. When Sendak took Shiro to another room, had Mertar escort her to this one, she'd started thinking the plan was artificial insemination, that Sendak was going to make her stand here and wait, and wait, and wait while he had his fun with Shiro. Before that she'd thought it might be cold, clinical, on Vonka's exam table under his supervision, both of them hooked up to so many sensors they couldn’t move much without tangling. But she's been vibrating with energy all day, running high on Shiro's usual pre-fight cocktail, and with the aphrodisiacs -

She takes the pills, downs the whole glass of water. If Sendak wants the kind of show it seems like he must, there's no real point to fighting it. And there’s definitely no reason to put up with Haxus forcing pills down her throat like she’s an angry cat. Pidge doesn't exactly need aphrodisiacs with Shiro, not even - maybe especially not - when he's the Champion, but they might make it easier later, when she can't shake the guilt of wanting the part of him he hates, when she can't stop thinking about how out of his mind he was and how she didn't try hard enough to stop anything from happening.

It's cold, but she strips down quickly; she’s never adjusted to the temperature but she’s adjusted pretty well to being stripped in front of an audience. At least Haxus doesn’t leer when he looks her up and down a couple times (but if he did, she wouldn’t have to wonder what the fuck he’s looking for).

"Come on," Haxus says, ushers her to the door. It feels exactly like the last few seconds before stepping into the arena, the same mix of eagerness and fear, the door the only thing between Pidge and some monumental shift; she has no idea how much is going to change tonight, but it's going to be big, and important, and they can’t go back..

Haxus opens the door and pushes her through. The main sitting room is almost completely empty, all the furniture except a plush chair for Sendak moved somewhere else, thick mats laid over the floor. Shiro's in the middle of the room, held still by two sentries, already shining with sweat, muscles tight with tension, cock hard and red at the tip. Pidge assumes they'll let him go now that she's here, but before she can brace herself Haxus escorts her right past him to stand in front of Sendak. Shiro snarls - _snarls_ \- and pulls against the sentries holding him when they pass; what did Sendak tell him, or give him, to get him in this kind of frenzy? Pidge isn't afraid of the Champion, she isn't, she knows he has more control than he thinks he does, but she's more relieved than she should be that she's being given some time to get used to him like this before they let him go.

When she gets close, Sendak frowns, starts sniffing the air, and narrows his eyes at Haxus.

"I'd hardly call this 'ready'," he says.

Haxus steps away from her to perch on the arm of Sendak's chair. "I thought you'd enjoy this more than I would."

Sendak hums, and kicks at her ankle until she spreads her legs for him. Great, she was just thinking Sendak's skin-crawling touch was the only thing that could improve this whole situation. He strokes two big, rough fingers over her cunt, already slick and sensitive from the aphrodisiacs. Ugh.

"Can't you keep her satisfied?" he asks over her shoulder; Pidge can hear Shiro grunting and straining against the sentries. Pidge tries not to react too much to Sendak's fingers, not to let Sendak use her to provoke the Champion, but he's so frustratingly good at touching her, at making her knees go weak. He scrapes a claw gently over her clit, and she whines before she can stop herself. It's hard to focus on anything with everything she's on, with heat building quick and consuming all through her, with the adrenaline making her desperate to do something, anything. Sendak keeps torturing her like that, scratching her clit light enough it doesn't hurt, just teases, but she knows how sharp he is and can't push into his touch. "Look at her, needy bitch. Perhaps you're not up to the task."

"Get your hands off her," Shiro growls, low and rough and menacing enough to send a thrill up Pidge's spine, to make her cunt throb and more wetness leak onto Sendak's hand. She clenches up around nothing, and like he _knows_ Sendak stops toying with her clit and pushes two thick fingers up into her, quick and rough enough she gasps and her knees almost buckle. Pidge's head swims, conscious, rational thought fighting in vain against the black hole of the adrenaline and the white-out pleasure; it's hard to remember why she shouldn't just climb in Sendak's lap and ride his fingers until she comes so hard she can't move.

Before she can do that, there's a scuffle behind her, and then something slams into her hard enough to knock her right off Sendak's fingers and onto the floor. She rolls a couple times, instinct to put distance between her and anything that can knock her down honed from a thousand falls in the arena, and looks up just in time to see Shiro punch Sendak in the face. It's his off hand but it's still a solid hit, Sendak's head bouncing off the back of his chair; heat flares in Pidge's gut, something primal at the base of her spine purring for this stronger option. But as much as she wants him to take her, conquer her, he interrupted her pursuit of a satisfying orgasm, and he's going to have to work to make up for that.

Pidge rolls onto her stomach, pushes up to her knees and then to standing so she can run across the room. The Champion's faster than she is, but it takes him a second to tear his attention from Sendak and notice her moving. By the time he's close enough to lunge for her she's ready to duck under his arms and roll to the other side of him. She takes off running again; in a small space like this, she won't ever be far out of his reach and she's just going to exhaust herself, but as much as she enjoys the chase she's pretty eager to get caught.

The Champion doesn't lunge again; when he catches her next he sweeps her legs out from under her, knocks her flat on her back. Even with the mats it knocks the wind out of her, gives him time to kick her legs apart and drop to his knees between them. Pidge aches for him, for the cock thick and hard between his legs, but she knows he can work harder, and as he's crawling forward she kicks him in the shoulder and scrambles backwards. She rolls onto her stomach and crawls away, putting distance between them as much as she's showing off her ass, her dripping cunt, taunting him with how easily he could mount her. He growls, and comes after her; she lets him crawl over her and then rears back, bashes her head into his nose. It's easy enough to push him off and onto his back, and - with a quick glance to make sure his nose isn't broken or bleeding - straddle his head.

Shiro's good with his mouth, incredible with his mouth, and the Champion's just as good. He could throw her off easily, but he goes almost docile for her, perfectly happy to lap over her cunt in broad strokes for now, to let her run the show. Pidge plants her hands on the floor and rocks back against him, grinding in a slow, dirty rhythm that has her thighs shaking before long. He growls, vibrations rumbling through her, and finally fucks his tongue up into her hole. There's no finesse, none of Shiro's tricks - the way he wiggles his tongue inside her to make her squirm, the way he presses against different points inside her to make her jump and squeal - just a good solid tongue-fucking and her cunt getting wetter, wetter, filthy wet with his spit and her come and his face must just be a mess of her. Pidge leans back, rests her hands on his thick thighs, so she can watch him, how dark and glassy his eyes are. She doesn't have as much leverage like this, can't ride his face as hard, but he lifts his head a little to stay buried in her cunt and that's good, so good to watch him work for it.

Pidge tightens her legs up a little, pulls her knees together, just to see if he'll fight when she cages him in, limits his movements. It just makes him work harder, nose mashed up against her pubic bone, tongue pushing into her as far as he can reach, fucking her good and deep, deeper than she'd thought he could like this. He grabs her ass tight, one cheek in each strong hand, and for a second she thinks he might be getting ready to throw her off and get his but he just spreads her wider, squeezes so hard it hurts. His Galra arm might not be fully functional but it's stronger than it usually is in their room, and she can almost feel the handprint bruise forming, blood rushing to pool under his fingers. It's a good hurt, sharp where his human fingernails dig in, deep where he's gripping too tight, and she whines for him, lifts one hand from his thigh and tangles it in his hair so she can pull, hard, give as good as she's getting. He growls - she's getting hooked on his growling, and the way it rumbles all through her - and slips his tongue out so he can focus on her clit, so he can let go of her ass with his human hand and push two fingers up inside her. He points his tongue and flicks it back and forth over hard, aching clit, quick tiny movements that set burning-hot pleasure fluttering through her, and when she starts whimpering he - fuck, he scrapes his teeth over her.

Her orgasm hits her like space junk out of nowhere when she's going full speed in her lion, a full-body jolt she barely saw coming. Her cunt spasms so hard it hurts, like her body's trying to tear his fingers off, keep them inside forever, and her legs clench so tight around his head she thinks she might see imprints of his ears on her thighs if she ever moves away. He barely notices, just keeps licking her through it, tongue soft and broad on her oversensitive clit to draw out her orgasm for what feels like forever. Pidge leans back against his firm grip on her ass, rocks her hips harder against him, chasing the waves pulsing through her. The new angle has her squirting all over his face, drenching him, marking him, her Champion, hers as much as she's his. More.

The Champion throws Pidge off before she's stopped shaking, taking advantage of her distraction to just flip her over his head with his Galra arm. Fuck, fuck, he's so strong and she wants to feel it, every ounce of his strength used against her. There's a part of Pidge that wants to just lie there, catch her breath and enjoy the aftershocks, but it's drowned out pretty quickly by the drugs still coursing through her, the desperate urge to move, to fight, and the need already building again in her oversensitive cunt. Her Champion's going to take her, mount her, breed her, and she's going to make sure he's desperate for it when he does. Pidge rolls onto her hands and knees, and starts scrambling away.

She doesn't get far, this time. Instead of crawling after her so he can just push inside when he overtakes her, the Champion chases her on foot, catching up in two or three strides and tangling his human hand in her hair. He clenches his fist, hard, and pulls, hard, yanks her up until she's kneeling in front of him, head tilted up. His cock is so hard, thick and red and leaking, hot when he smacks it lightly against her cheek, leaves her sticky with his precome. She hasn't had this, yet, he's always so concerned with getting her off, and her mouth waters having his cock so close. Pidge tries to lean forward, get her mouth on him, but his hold on her is too tight. She gave up her upper hand and her Champion won't give it back without a fight.

Luckily he doesn't make her wait too long; she can read how desperate he is in every line of his body, can taste it when he rubs the head of his cock over her lips. He pushes inside in one steady thrust, nearly all the way to the back of her throat. Pidge can't open wide enough to get her teeth out of the way, but he groans at the scrape of them before she can wrap her lips, as into the pain as she is. He gives her a little time to adjust, holds his hips still and her head still and lets her taste his cock, salty and bitter and perfect, lets her adjust to the weight of him on her tongue and the way he stretches her jaw. It's so much, there's so much of him, and her heart pounds thinking how little he cares, how he's going to make her take it no matter what. She can take it, she's more than up to whatever he gives her, she's going to make him feel as good as she always does and she's going to show him what a worthy bitch she is.

Pidge's tongue is pinned under his cock, but she wiggles it as much as she can, purrs when he groans and tightens his grip on her hair. His legs are shaking with the effort of holding still but he's good for her, fully in control but letting her switch between sucking so hard her cheeks press against him and working her tongue against the solid heat of him. She likes the way her Champion moans for her, the little jerks of his hips when he forgets himself, the unconscious tightening of his fist, every little sign of how he may have the upper hand but she can still make him weak. She's drooling, enough it's starting to spill out the corners of her mouth, salty with the taste of him, and there's a part of her that could stay here on her knees keeping his cock warm for the rest of their lives.

That part of her is easily buried, though, by the part that raises her arms to scratch his thighs, the only part of him she can really reach, red lines blooming on his skin as she drags her short nails all the way to his knees. The Champion hisses and grabs her chin with his Galra arm, presses at the hinges of her jaw until her mouth drops open impossibly more. Pidge looks up at him through her lashes, at his pink cheeks and bitten-red lips, and their eyes meet; hers are probably as glassy and unfocused as his, almost certainly as hungry. Her Champion maintains eye contact as he tilts her head a little, uses his tight grip on her jaw to put her where he wants her, and he keeps on looking at her as he pushes forward, another slow, smooth thrust until he's in her throat.

Pidge gags at the intrusion until he cuts off her air, throat muscles working to drive him back out, but he's both unstoppable force and immovable object and her only option is to give in. He pulls out, all the way out, leaves her coughing and gasping and drooling all over herself, keeps his grip on her jaw so she's ready for him when he pushes back in. She's ready for him this time, but she still gags when he fucks in deep, can't help it, gags and chokes a little and he groans low and rough. There's a fire building at the base of her spine, low in her gut, flaring up every time he makes it clear how little her pleasure, or even her comfort, matters to him; she likes being used like this.

With a satisfied grunt the Champion lets go of her jaw, trusts her to keep herself open for his cock, and cradles the back of her head so he can hold her still and start fucking her in earnest. There's still Shiro somewhere in there, under all of it, she recognizes it in the slow rhythm of his hips at first, the Champion eager to take his pleasure but Shiro so concerned about hurting her. Pidge tilts her head just a little more, opens her throat just a little bit more, doesn't bother to hold back the noises of her body giving way for his cock as he fucks her faster, harder. When he pushes in all the way he grinds a little, forcing himself as far into her throat as possible, and with her nose pressed into his pubic hair all she can smell is sweat and musk. Her cunt throbs, dripping a mess onto the floor, clenching up around nothing.

The Champion starts to lose his rhythm, lets go of her hair so he can hold her head in both hands and really fuck into her. Pidge can't breathe, the force of him and the depth of him and the dirty grind every time he pushes in, and she knows she should worry about that but she doesn't. He's off the leash, her Champion in all his glory, and she's his to use as he wants. He's going to come down her throat, fill her up, push her down and fuck her cunt and fill her up from that end, too, and she doesn't care about breathing because all she needs is his thick cock and his strong hands and the taste of his skin.

A shrill tone plays, all of a sudden, painful enough to her oversensitive ears she almost forgets herself and bite down, and it's enough to send her Champion stumbling backwards, letting go of her and leaving her empty. Pidge's throat is scraped raw, her lips a little numb, her chin and chest covered in drool, and she draws in deep gasping breaths. When the high whistle stops, he opens his eyes and just stares at her, takes in the mess he's reduced her to. His cock is almost purple at the tip, hard and straining and needy and so wet from her mouth and throat, and Pidge is tired of waiting. She turns her back to him and drops to her elbows, pushes her ass up, presents for him. He doesn't waste any time claiming his prize, so eager his cock slips against her cunt instead of pushing inside once, twice, before he thinks to use his hand to guide himself in.

Pidge almost howls when he thrusts in to the hilt, a plug in a socket and the energy coursing through her is enough to white out her vision. This is it, what she needs, what she's here for, the only cunt worthy of her Champion's cock, the only bitch worthy to bear his young. He fucks her hard and fast, sloppy, too far gone for rhythm or finesse or anything but driving towards his orgasm at all costs. Pidge arches her back, spreads her legs more, tries to take him deeper, deeper, wants to feel him in her throat again. He falls forward, one hand braced on the floor in front of her, the other wrapping around her waist so he can work them over her clit. He's rough, too much pressure, too fast, too much for Pidge's overstimulated body and she cries out, not entirely sure whether she means to make him stop or make him keep going. Even like this, even out of his head, her Champion knows what she needs.

The smack of flesh on flesh, his deep throaty grunts on every punishing thrust, the almost-whimpers he keeps knocking out of her, it's all so loud, always so loud when they fuck. Pidge's whole body is lit up, nerves sparking everywhere, her hard nipples against the floor and Shiro's arm tight around her waist and the heat of him leaning over her, every little incidental sensation feels almost as good as the bruising force of the Champion's fingers on her clit. It's so much, too much to take, like she's going to burn up and leave nothing behind, but it's so good she never wants it to stop. He groans her name soon enough, though, chanting something that could be Pidge or could be bitch (and it doesn't matter, she's both, she's whatever he wants whenever he wants it) as he grinds his cock in deep, deeper, hips pressing against her bruised ass, and comes.

There's so much of it, like there's so much of everything about him, filling her up just right, the heat of him spreading through her so good it feels like she's melting. He's stopped moving his fingers but kept them pressed up against her clit so she can grind against them, and the fire in her flares again at the strung-out noises he makes. Pidge rocks her hips, quick and hard and desperate, chasing the orgasm she was getting so close to. The mighty Champion all but collapses on her, nuzzles at the back of her neck before biting down, hard. The jolt of pain, the thrill of being claimed, it's all she needs to go rocketing over the edge, to come with her hips bucking and her vision going blurry.

Her arms give out while the aftershocks are shuddering through her, when she's clenching around his still-hard cock and making him whine for her. She can't quite catch her breath, can't seem to move, just has to lie there with her hips propped up in the Champion's grip. He doesn't seem to be in much better shape, breath coming rough and heavy against the fresh bite mark on her neck, arm wrapped around her going more and more slack until he's lowered her to the floor with his arm pinned under her.

Pidge falls asleep like that, pressed into the floor, fully surrounded by her Champion, her Shiro.

*

It's hard for Shiro to wrap his head around the way Pidge handles things, the way she refuses to hide and as a result has to just live with everything, deal with it as it comes. Pidge doesn't block things out until they either disappear deep in the back corners of her brain or need to be dealt with once and for all, and maybe sometimes Shiro envies her a little for being stronger than he is, but most of the time he wishes he could block things out for her, protect her from the weakness of needing to retreat and be overwhelmed. Sometimes she walks away from Sendak or those torture sessions with the doctor looking like there's steel running through her veins, and Shiro wants to sit at her feet and ask her to teach him how; sometimes she cries herself to sleep in his arms and Shiro wants to sit her down and shake her and not let her up until she's learned how to repress.

Sometimes she lies silently in the bed, wearing both her overshirt and bodysuit like she never bothers with when they're alone, and reaches her arms out until Shiro comes to bed, and she shouldn't want him touching her at all, should be yelling and screaming and keeping him as far away as she can, but instead she curls into him. Pidge hasn't talked about it much - she's protecting Shiro and his inability (refusal) to remember things, and he's pathetically grateful for it - and she doesn't talk now.

Shiro doesn't talk, either; how much did I hurt you and it's okay to be afraid of me and do you think it took and all I remember is loving it are all too much. He tries to pet her hair, but when he gets to the back of her head it's too tempting to keep going, just another inch, run his fingers over the the bruise and the scabs on the back of her neck and he doesn't like the way he feels when he looks at it.

(Proud, possessive, a little like he wants to fit his teeth over the bite mark and gently worry it while she goes limp and pliant for him.)

Shiro had looked at Pidge, so long ago it feels like another lifetime, looked at her and seen Commander Holt's daughter and Matt's little sister, and the urge to protect her rose up quick and overwhelming, knocked him on his ass it was so sudden and intense. He'd looked at her not so long afterwards, bossing him around and using his arm like it was just one of her tools, watched her stand stubborn and determined while something roared out of the sky towards them, and he'd watched her get in her lion and fight and he'd thought maybe protecting her was more complicated than he thought. He'd watched her struggle through training and fight to keep her secrets, watched her make Keith smile the way not many people can, and he'd watched her try to fight off two huge Galra on her own while his head went fuzzy and his vision went black.

When he looks at her now all he sees is every way he's failed her, every way he's hurt her; all he sees is how many more times he's going to fail her, hurt her, before this ends one way or another. Maybe Pidge doesn't need him the way he thought at first, but she does need him, as much as he needs her. It wouldn't do either of them any good for Shiro to get himself killed or Pidge punished for resisting too much, but how many times has he even bothered to try? How long has it been since he's said no? Sendak's sentries didn't have to restrain him because he was fighting to stop it, they had to hold him back so he didn't take what Sendak wasn't ready to give him.

A year and a half ago, surviving was enough. He wasn't sure he could get himself home if he escaped, so there was nowhere to go, and he'd done his job of getting Matt and his father in better positions for staying alive or maybe even making it out, and if all he had left was his will to live he wasn't going to give it up so easy. Every day he didn't die was proof how strong he could be, even when he was broken.

It's not enough anymore. Every quintant they do more and more to Pidge, they show Shiro how weak he is; every quintant is another experiment in just how complacent Shiro can get. The longer Shiro survives the worse off Pidge is, the less likely he'll take a chance to get out if it comes. Lying in this comfortable bed in a decent room with the easy comfort of Pidge's hands in his hair, the easy distraction of Pidge's lips against his, the easy connection of their bodies coming together, it's all too easy to think just making it through another quintant without losing each other is the best they can do.

"Shiro?' Pidge's voice is quiet, would be even if she weren't tucked into his chest.

"You need something?"

"I just - you said Sendak liked to torture you by making you like things, or realize how much you can like something."

"He loves it, yeah."

"Did you ever figure out how to deal with it?"

Shiro sighs, moves his hand down to rub her back. "Not really."

"It's not so much what I enjoyed," she says, "as how upset you might be if you knew."

"I got lucky," Shiro says. "He made me show you, and you didn't care, and I don't worry so much anymore."

"You worry all the time."

"But it's less than I did before." Shiro scoots back a little, puts enough space between them he can look down and actually see her face. Pidge looks more exhausted than anything, which is…good. He lives in fear, a little bit, of looking in her eyes and seeing her broken, terrified, hurt, but she just looks tired, and maybe like she needs a hug. "I'll listen, and try to understand, if you want to talk about it."

The door opens before she can answer; they've been lying here longer than Shiro thought. He slips out of bed before they start barking orders, holds his hand out for Pidge.

"Just you tonight, Champion," says the guard, and if Shiro had decades he wouldn't be able to figure out what's going on with the mix of relief and loneliness that washes over him at that. Sendak didn't let Pidge into a healing pod, she's just had to live with all the bruises and soreness and that big nasty bite on her neck, and of course she shouldn't fight, but Shiro wants to be near her as long as she'll let him.

Pidge takes his hand, and squeezes it, offers him a small, sad smile. Survival isn't enough.

The guard always re-enables his arm once they make it to the backstage, when they're surrounded by dozens of fighters and almost as many other guards and sentries. It makes it easy, now, to walk into some big, solid alien, bounce back off him hard enough to knock his guard over. She's too busy swearing at him, too busy making it clear she's still in charge by kicking at him when he tries to get up, to notice the small device Shiro grabs and slips into his bodysuit.

*

Sendak is frustrated, which Pidge should probably worry about but mostly she's just bored. It can't have been more than twelve or thirteen quintants since the druids arrived, but it feels like she's been subject to the way they decided Sendak should breed them for years. Lying on her back with her hips up on a pillow and Shiro between her legs isn't actually that much better than lying on her back on an exam table. There's been an unspoken agreement between them to keep it as cold and clinical as possible for Sendak unless he forces their hands, denying him everything he enjoys about making them fuck for his entertainment, and it's even harder to deal with Shiro's blank face and bored, steady thrusting than her feelings about his feral alter ego. Yesterday he went soft inside her; Sendak doesn't jerk off watching them anymore.

The slap of skin against skin just agitates her, not like when they're alone and it makes her want it harder, louder, and Shiro's blank face and dull grunt when he comes inside her just leave her cold, empty even as he fills her up. Maybe it'll take this time, she'll come away pregnant, finally, and she'll never have to go through this again. Shiro pulls out and backs away; Sendak snaps his fingers to signal for Haxus, who binds Pidge's ankles and attaches the cuffs to a hook in the ceiling with a long chain. The two Galra leave the room without another word, leaving them alone for probably at least a varga.

"Do you need anything?" Shiro asks, like he has the freedom to actually get her what she might ask for.

"Clean me up a little?" She loves being filthy with his come, most of the time, but when she couldn't even get wet enough to make it entirely comfortable it just makes her feel…weird, and a little sad. Lonely in a way she doesn't want to feel with Shiro. He nods, looks around a little like there might be a towel or something, then shrugs like always and untucks the fitted sheet to wipe her down with. Even as shitty and hollow as she feels after these sessions in Sendak's quarters, when she's alone with him again his hands on her, gentle and thorough, feel so nice.

"He didn't leave a blanket," Shiro says; he only does maybe half the time. Pidge isn't sure if it has to do with his mood, or if he's just trying to keep them on their toes, but she's gotten used to being cold all the time so it doesn’t matter much. Shiro stretches out next to her, presses soft kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, avoids her mouth until she turns her head and catches his lips. She has to remind herself, every time, how good it feels to kiss him, how warm she gets when he cups her face and holds her close, how safe she feels in his arms. This is the closest she's come to losing that, these quiet aftermaths when she can't make her feelings do what she wants.

When Shiro stops kissing her, he tilts his forehead against hers and just breathes, deep, steady breaths. He keeps his eyes closed and sighs when Pidge brings her hand up to comb through his sweaty hair. This takes a lot out of him, the pressure to perform, the need to stay hard and get himself off when Pidge is uncomfortable and barely present, the inability to take care of her in any real sense, but Pidge doesn't know how to care. And he hates it less than she does, or at least the alternative upsets him so much anything would be easier. Pidge doesn't want to see him fall apart under the weight of the shitty, impossible choices he has to make, but she doesn't have the room on her shoulders to take it on herself. 

"I think I've figured out how the arm controls work," she says, because that little gray rectangle is the closest thing to hope they have and reminding him they have it might make him feel better without taking anything out of her own reserves. "I need to test it on you to make sure."

"Okay," he says, rolls onto his side next to her. It's impossible to really cuddle with her legs chained up, but he's good about never going too far, making sure they're always touching, making sure she can feel the heat and the presence of him.

"I might hurt you," Pidge says. "I'm not sure of the limits, I might crank you up too high and you won't be able to control it, or too low and the weight will be too much, or what if I break something and they'll know what we're up to, or - "

"I know," he says. "I trust you. No risk, no reward, right?"

"There might not be a reward, no matter what happens." Whoops. So much for hope. Pidge's legs hurt, the strain in her calves and thighs shifting from unpleasant to painful. She's gross and sticky and tired and she doesn't want to do this anymore, wants them to let her back in the arena so she can make a mistake and it'll all be over.

"Hey," Shiro says, soft and quiet; it's not until he swipes his thumb under her eye she realizes the tears that always take up residence in her eyes when these sessions begin have spilled over. 

"I'm okay," Pidge says, the words scraping against her throat; hearing them in her own voice makes her cry even harder. She doesn't want to worry Shiro, but she can't stop, can't get any control of herself, cries so hard her throat hurts and her stomach feels sore like she's done too many crunches and her eyes feel red and raw. Shiro presses close to her, gets one arm under the back of her head and the other across her stomach in the worst approximation of a hug Pidge has ever had. If this is it, if they've finally broken through the last layer and it's true there's no stronger Pidge waiting to emerge, how long will she make him carry her dead weight around?

Pidge rolls into him, even though it strains her legs, hurts her hips, feels like she's going to tear apart at the waist. She sobs so hard she can barely breathe against his chest, pressing her forehead against one of his scars. Shiro can take anything, survive anything; if Pidge is really lucky, he can survive enough for the both of them.

*

Shiro starts counting things. The number of guards and sentries that come when he's going to the arena alone, the number that come for them both; the steps to the locker room, the infirmary, the common area, Sendak's quarters; the number of doors he passes in every hallway, and who goes in and out of which doors; the seconds between a victory and his escort out of the arena. He taps his fingers in rhythm with the guard patrols when he spends any time in the infirmary, he nods along with the footsteps he can sometimes hear outside Sendak's door, he tries to memorize the different steps of different guards and learns to tell the difference between guard and sentry from the way they sound when they walk.

He doesn't remember how he got out the first time - he stopped trying once he remembered he got his arm from Haggar, so he'd been sent to her by the time he escaped - but it starts to feel familiar in that unpleasant way that tugs at his brain and makes it hard to focus. Losing focus isn't an option, because failing isn't an option. If he doesn't get Pidge out of here soon he's going to lose her, and that's not an option, either.

The crowd in the arena is angry tonight, as loud as ever but Shiro knows the difference between cheering and screaming, excitement and bloodlust. Maybe Shiro's here to be punished for his failure as a stud, maybe Sendak needs to blow off some steam watching Shiro get beaten bloody. Taking his own revenge on Shiro's body for what's probably a failure of his own fucking doctors isn't enough anymore.

Shiro stops circling the pit when the large doors at the far end slide open again to release his opponent; from here it's hard to make out much detail, but they're definitely Galra, and wearing the same uniform bodysuit every other Galra working on the station wears. So it is a punishment; just not for him. Or doing Sendak's dirty work, without the luxury of the fugue state the drugs he didn't get this morning put him in, is Shiro's punishment. It doesn't matter.

Even as hard as it is to get in the right head space when he's not being helped along, when he's fighting so hard to keep that state of mind distant, fighting Galra is always easy for Shiro. Sure, this guy pissed Sendak off, but anyone can do that, especially with the mood he's been in since the druids arrived, but what was he doing before that? Developing Pidge's treatments, or drugs for Shiro, or holding her down during her time with the doctor, or escorting one of them to the lab or Sendak's quarters or this arena? Maybe he's stood outside the door while Sendak takes what he wants from Shiro, maybe he's hurried Pidge along with the butt of his gun after a treatment session when she's too tired to walk.

The Galra charges, because of course he does. Shiro barrels forward and meets him halfway, drives his shoulder into the Galra's stomach and uses his momentum to drive them back against a stone pillar. About ten feet, from the center of the pit to this weapons cache. The Galra manages to shove him off, push him back, and lands a few solid blows on his chest and stomach to knock the wind out of him. Fuck, but Shiro loves a good hand-to-hand match. He charges forward before he fully has his breath back, tackles the Galra so hard they slide across the dirt when they hit, and starts pummeling the guy's face. Maybe he's the sadistic fuck of a doctor who's been treating Pidge, maybe he can get some small revenge for her.

It won't be enough, nothing would ever be enough, but turning his face into goo is still _something_.

Shiro's too focused on trying to break the Galra's skull into a thousand pieces to brace himself properly, and he's thrown off easily when the Galra gets his feet under him and surges up. He scrambles to his feet, kicks Shiro in the ribs - cracks Shiro's ribs, he knows that feeling - and runs. Shiro gives himself a tick to let the adrenaline numb the pain, but only one, before he pushes to his feet and takes off. He passes a rock cluster that usually has a weapons cache (seven or eight steps from the imprint of his body in the dirt) and a pillar with the imprint of a box worn into the ground next to it (fifteen steps) and when he catches up to the Galra he falls for the oldest fucking trick in the book. The Galra jumps out of the way at the last second and Shiro slams right into the rock he was standing in front of, bashes his nose against it.

Enough playing around. The crowd hates a fight that's over before it begins, but they love vengeance so they probably won't mind much if Shiro just fucking murders his opponent. His ribs hurt, his stomach, his definitely-broken nose, and he's been so focused on mapping the pit the adrenaline hasn't pushed all the feeling out of his body and the thoughts out of his head like it should and he's just fucking done.

He's faster than the Galra, or at least he's worn himself out less, and catches up to him easily, tackles him to the ground again, face down this time. Shiro grabs the back of his head and grinds his face into the dirt and listens to him splutter; was he part of the small group that ambushed them? How many times did he turn Shiro's arm down so much it hurt to have the weight hanging off his shoulder and handcuffed him on top of it? Shiro yanks his head back, far enough it must be painful, looks at his face all matted with dirt and growls when it doesn't satisfy him.

"There's - " the Galra starts, pauses to spit some dirt out. "There's a private access corridor between Sendak's quarters and the hangar. The door - I haven't seen it but I think it's in his bedroom. You could - there's only ever one or two guards in that section of the hangar, it's an easy escape."

Shiro growls again and shoves his face back into the dirt. He can't trust information given under these circumstances, and he's not going to offer the mercy the Galra’'s obviously angling for. And it's convenient, too convenient. Shiro lets go of his head and stands up, kicks the Galra's ribs until he hears a crack. What goes around comes around.

It takes a little while for the Galra to get up, but Shiro's happy to wait. There's something unsatisfying about killing an opponent prone and helpless on the ground, he avoids it if he can, and the thing about Galra is their pride doesn't let them stay down. His opponent pushes up to his knees, then to his feet, and before he can try to beg for mercy any further Shiro lights up his hand and drives it into his stomach. The Champion would savor the stink of burning flesh and blood and viscera but Shiro's stomach turns and he pulls away. He leaves the Galra dying his slow, painful death on the dirt and wishes he felt even a little bit better about it.

*

Pidge thinks, maybe, she's not supposed to feel so powerful on her knees for Shiro. Or lying on the bed between his thick thighs, like she is right now, lazily pressing kisses to his slowly-hardening cock. But it's almost the only time she feels anything but hopeless anymore, this and when he goes down on her, and that's all that really matters. Shiro's naked and she isn't and she loves it, the privilege of his beautiful body, the safety of her own control, the texture of his scars when she pets over his stomach and hips. There's a nasty one on his inner thigh, raised like only a few others, and when she slips down a little to suck one of his balls into her mouth it rubs against her cheek. She shivers a little at the feeling, the soft soft skin of his thigh and the roughness of the scar, and closes her eyes to savor it.

"Feels good," he sighs, runs his fingers through Pidge's hair. She doesn't need him to tell her, she can hear it in his uneven breaths, feel it when she skims her hand over his cock and he grows even harder for her, but she loves his voice like this. It's good later, rough and desperate, and it's good before, low and sweet and a little dark, but when he's just barely being pulled out of his head and he's soft, breathy, when he just can't keep from spilling over with how good it feels, it settles in her chest and not her cunt. Everything horrible happening around them, to them, and she can still make him so happy he can't contain it.

She pulls away from his balls to kiss her way up his cock again, open, messy kisses so she can enjoy the salt taste of his skin on her tongue, sucks a little like she's trying to leave marks. Maybe she is, maybe she should leave bruises all over this big beautiful cock of his and make sure Sendak sees how much Shiro is hers. Shiro moans, soft and breathy and pleased, hips shifting under her hands. Pidge can't decide whether she wants to look at his cock while she works her way up or at the muscles shifting under his skin as he moves. It's so good to be able to look at him, let herself love how gorgeous he is, so good not to screw her eyes shut and pretend he's somebody else as much as she can.

"Pidge," he sighs, a hint of a whine in his voice, and combs his fingers through her hair. It's a plea, a soft one; he wants her so much. Pidge almost purrs as she sucks the head of his cock into her mouth, so satisfied to get to him like this. She doubts he looked at her before all this and thought about how good it would be to have her scrawny body tangled up with his, but she gets to him as much as he gets to her anyway. Pidge keeps her lips soft, her mouth wet, so much easier when she can go at her own pace, and she can feel him getting even harder in her mouth. Shiro tastes so good, so fucking good, and the weight of him feels so right it makes her whole body sing.

The bodysuit clings uncomfortably where she's dripping wet for him, but all shifting her hips does is make it rub against her just enough to tease. Pidge whines a little, so distracted working her hips for that whisper of pressure on her clit she almost misses the way Shiro's hips jerk when she does. Almost. She moans again, loud and exaggerated; if she could see his face she's pretty sure she'd see him rolling his eyes, like she can’t feel what it does to him. 

Pidge is making a mess of him, drooling all over his cock, and the sloppy wet sounds of sucking on the now-leaking head of his cock are way more appealing than fake moans just to make her mouth vibrate. She wraps her hand around his thick shaft, slick with spit, and strokes him in a slow, steady rhythm. Up to meet her lips, squeeze, suck hard with her tongue pressed against his slit, down again, squeeze at the base of his cock. Shiro isn't really someone who _squirms_ but there's no better way to describe the needy shifting of his hips every time she squeezes. She's not being rough, not by anyone's standards and definitely not theirs, but Shiro knows a promise when he feels it, knows the bite of her fingernails and the strength of her grip and knows she knows how much he likes it, and the way he whines in anticipation, tenses like he's bracing himself, makes fire surge in her veins.

No roughness today, though, not right now; now she's just enjoying herself, taking her time with all her favorite parts of Shiro's cock in her mouth and Shiro's body spread out before her. The taste of him, the smell of his sweat as she works him up, the heat of his cock under one hand and the texture of his scars under the other, the clench of his fist in her hair before he remembers and loosens back up, the soft grunts and sighs of her name that get louder and needier as she strokes him. For all that Sendak's abused him to the point of desensitizing his body to anything but pain, Shiro's impossibly easy for gentle, slow, enthusiasm and he falls apart under her almost like he's the one who's new to this.

Pidge drags his orgasm out of him slow and easy, sucking a little harder, teasing her tongue around him with a little more pressure, stroking faster, squeezing harder, twisting her wrist, a gradual, steady build so when he groans like he's dying and comes in her mouth it feels like it's taken forever but still like it's a surprise. Pidge swallows him down as best she can, but he comes so _much_ some of it spills out of her mouth, streaking down his cock; she strokes him through it, doesn't let him go until he's finished, until he's twitching beneath her like it's too much. 

She sits up, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and just takes him in for a while, the flush of his chest and the way it heaves with his breathing, bitten-red lips and messy hair and eyes all wide and adoring. Pidge can't look at him like that for long, has to crawl up his body and kiss him until she's breathing as hard as he is.

Shiro reaches around and grabs her ass, makes the same soft, grunting, satisfied noise he always makes at how small she is in his hands, and squeezes. She sighs a little at the touch, rocks her hips lazily against his stomach, but when he raises an eyebrow at her, asking permission, she shakes her head. She's floating right now, on the perfect mix of arousal and satisfaction and whatever the mess of her feelings for him has turned into, and letting him touch her, letting herself come is more complicated than she wants to deal with right now. He pouts a little, exaggerated and silly, and if she thinks too hard about anything she has to curl up under the covers and remind herself she doesn't want to die but it's so easy, right now, to just laugh at him and lean down for another kiss.

*

When the moment comes, it isn't as quick as Shiro expected. It's another day of Pidge storing the remote for his arm in her bodysuit so she can practice palming it and getting it under the pillow without Sendak or Haxus or any of the druids noticing; it's Pidge complaining about how much the heavy chains hurt her legs and reminding them if she's tense and uncomfortable it'll be harder to conceive and Sendak actually listening, for once, telling Haxus to use lighter chains if it'll shut her up; it's the look in Pidge's eyes while Shiro thrusts inside of her trying to think about other times, better times, her hands and mouth and slick cunt when she wants him. She might not have admitted it yet, to Shiro or to herself, but Pidge has started giving up and he can't let that happen.

When they've been alone for twenty doboshes or so, Shiro gets out of bed and inspects the chest of drawers against one wall - a druid had started to move it, yesterday, and Haxus had nearly tackled him in his rush to stop it. Secret doors feel like something out of a fairy tale, and Shiro's half-expecting to find a blank wall and the end of this plan that was doomed from the start, but sure enough behind the dresser is a door that, if Shiro's right, can't possibly lead anywhere they've been in the station so far. It might not lead to the hangar, but maybe if that Galra was right about the door…

"Is it there?"

"Yeah," Shiro says, moves back to the bed so as soon as Pidge reaches under the pillow and grabs the remote he's ready. She cranks his arm up, and he tries not to get too distracted by the rush of energy flowing through him, the sudden weightlessness of that fucking burden of a limb, keeps his focus on grabbing the chains as close to Pidge's ankle cuffs as possible and melting right through them. He can't do the cuffs, and she's going to clank a little while they run, but it's the best he's got. "Come on."

Pidge shrugs him off when he tries to help her into her bodysuit, so Shiro just worries about getting his own on. It'd be quicker to make a run for it naked, but he has no idea what kind of ship they'll end up with or how far they'll have to go, and the shirts and bodysuits aren't much but he'd rather be stranded in space with them than without.

"You sure this'll work?" Shiro asks, palm inches from the keypad on the door.

"No," Pidge says, "but I've seen Sendak use his robot arm to open doors so it's possible."

Shiro shrugs - they've had worse odds - and rests his hand on the scanner. The door slides open, revealing a long, winding hallway, but an alarm starts blaring. Not ideal.

"Go go go go go," Shiro shouts, urging Pidge through ahead of him. He doesn't know where Sendak goes when he leaves them alone after a fertilization attempt, but it's probably not far.

"I'm going!" Pidge yells, darting past him, fast even when she's sore and her legs are tired. Shiro pauses, looks behind him; if the private hangar isn't well-guarded, it might be smarter to stay here, face Sendak and Haxus and the druids and whoever else shows up. Pidge can take care of a couple sentries, even unarmed, and they'll have more time after taking off before someone comes after them if Shiro makes sure they're not followed to the ship. "Come on!"

Shiro shakes it off; getting separated now is a bad idea, and Pidge has stopped partway down the hall to yell at him. He can't slow her down no matter how much he wants to prove he can be the big hero and save her all on his own. He takes off after her, skidding a little on the smooth flooring of the hall. It's long, and twisty, and more than once one of them crashes into a wall by taking a turn too sharply but they don't stop. There aren't footsteps behind them but all that might mean is Sendak has a better route to the hangar and he's going to be there waiting for them. They'll cross that bridge when they come to it.

Pidge almost crashes into the door but Shiro jumps for the scanner and gets his hand on it just in time so she only has to slow down a little. There's a burst of gunfire as she crosses the threshold, and Shiro charges after her with his heart in his throat. There are definitely more than a couple sentries, more like twenty or thirty, at least, but Pidge is on the floor sliding between one of their legs and, as far as he can tell, hasn't been hit. She grabs the sentry's ankle as she slides past, knocks him over, and his gun goes clattering across the floor to Shiro's feet. He picks it up and tosses it to her, then dives into the fray himself.

Sentries fall to the ground in pieces everywhere he turns, his arm slicing through them like a hot knife through butter. He almost trips, more than once, too focused on cutting down more and more to pay attention to the parts piling up on the floor. Pidge is holding her own, using the butt of the gun like a club instead of figuring out how to shoot, but she's worn out and there's so many and they're almost certainly under orders not to kill but there's too much gunfire for that to matter. Shiro just needs to keep thinning them out, make it easier for Pidge to dodge and weave through the laser blasts, clear a path to the ship against the far wall.

A shot grazes his leg but it doesn't matter; it hurts but not enough to stop him and it's not like he really needs his legs to fly. Pidge can sit on the floor and be his legs if it comes to it, they can escape the way they've survived, leaning on each other. Shiro cuts through a sentry at the neck, catches another just below his shoulders, throws one across the room. There's more of them than he thought, but he's getting closer, kill by kill, to the ship, to freedom. Pidge follows in his wake, keeping the way clear with the butt of her gun, making their faces crumple like they're made of paper. She's wild, like she is in the arena, bright eyes and bared teeth and bloodlust, and it's almost too easy to get distracted watching her.

He's watching her when an army of actual Galra guards bursts through the door and overwhelms her, and he's distracted enough for a sentry to kick his legs out from under him, get him on his knees. But Shiro's done giving in, done staying down, and he lashes out to cut the sentry in half, gets to his feet and takes out two more, three, only a few more between him and the ship. The guards aren't advancing on him, and it doesn't make sense but he's not going to complain. 

"Leaving us, Champion?" Sendak's voice cuts through the sounds of the fight, deep and booming. Shiro hates that he immediately stops and turns, something in him responding to the implicit command like he's a robot reacting to a new line of code; Sendak's holding Pidge off the ground with an arm around her stomach and a hand on her throat. It doesn't look like he's cutting off her air, but he could so easily, could hurt her so much. "That's a pity."

"Let her go," Shiro says; it's so empty, there's so little he can do. If he rushes Sendak, he might drop Pidge to defend himself, but Shiro can't kill Sendak in one shot even if Pidge manages to break past the guards and run for the ship.

"You've done well," Sendak says. "Maybe you've earned your freedom. You can take the ship and go, if you can figure out how to fly it."

"She comes with me."

"Oh," Sendak says, "no, that won't be possible. I'd hate to risk the life of your unborn pup by sending a pregnant bitch out into deep space. There's a war on, you know, it’s dangerous for travelers."

"Go, Shiro," Pidge says, because of course she does. She's squirming in Sendak's grip, manages to land a kick on his leg hard enough to make him wince for a split second before he schools his face back into that creepy placid smile. Pidge can handle herself, even as close to giving up as she has been lately, she can survive until he comes back for her. He's as sure of that as he is of anything.

"I'm sure we can keep her entertained until your no doubt daring rescue," Sendak says, and Shiro knows everything that means because he's done everything that means and maybe, just maybe, she really will give up once she's Sendak's favorite toy. It's a trick, probably, an obvious one; Sendak wouldn't let Shiro get far, it's just a test to see if he'll surrender this easily.

Shiro raises his hands behind his head and drops to his knees; he's so easy for Sendak to manipulate, so weak, too weak, but there's so much he could do to Pidge even in the time it would take Shiro to get help and come back, even if he stayed in one place so Shiro could find them again easily, even if he doesn't want to do lasting physical damage. Shiro has enough regrets and the Champion apparently isn't going to take over and absolve him.

"No!" 

Shiro can't look her in the eye, can't face how badly he's failing her, so he just watches her struggle in Sendak's arms, like she's going to get away; he hopes she does, wiggles right out of his grip and bolts for the ship and flies far, far away. She wouldn't need to ever come back, Shiro's sealed his own fate. But Sendak just tightens his grip on her throat, cuts off her air until she stops struggling, and drops her at Haxus' feet so he can walk over to stand in front of Shiro.

"Good boy," he says, presses his thumb against Shiro's lower lip until his mouth drops open a little. Maybe he's going to make Shiro suck his cock right here just to make absolutely sure everyone knows how weak he is. It wouldn't be the first time. Bur Sendak just stands there, holding Shiro's mouth open, because he doesn't need to do anything else to drive home how much he's in control.

"Druids, escort her to Vonka," Sendak says; Shiro can't see much around his bulk, but he can see enough to know Pidge is up and walking, so he didn't hurt her too badly. But he wouldn't, if she's - God, how long? And how many times have they chained her up, knowing it had already taken? "And Haxus, prepare her a room in my quarters. She should be under constant supervision, in her condition."

"And the Champion?"

"Will stay in his room." So this is what it takes to get them separated. Shiro's so stupid, so fucking stupid, basically handing Sendak a handwritten note saying 'I need to be close to Pidge more than anything else' in case he needed any help figuring out how to punish them. 

"Sir, if we separate them, the druids will report to Haggar that the empathic bonds aren't - "

"Let them," Sendak says. "She has her hands full with that fool of a prince, and she still expects us to believe Zarkon survived Voltron's attack. If her druids are a problem we'll throw them out the airlock."

"Understood," Haxus says, and leaves. The guards begin to file out behind him, and the sentries who are still standing, until Shiro's alone with Sendak.

"I expected more of a fight," Sendak says, slips his thumb out of Shiro's mouth and slaps him lightly on the cheek. "I'm not sure whether I'm proud or disappointed."

Shiro shouldn't want his praise, or care about his disdain, but he wouldn't be here if he were strong enough to resist. Sendak slaps him again, harder, and Shiro's breath catches; he can feel himself getting hard, anticipating his reward, or his punishment. It makes his stomach turn, still too much himself to just accept it. The Champion would be handling this better, but the Champion would have left Pidge behind.

"I suppose it doesn't matter," Sendak says, stepping back and signaling for a couple sentries Shiro hadn't realized were still in the room. "Enjoy your solitude, my Champion; you've more than earned it."


	8. v: Matt

"Can you hand me the one that's, like..." Hunk trails off, and Matt cranes his neck to look down into the guts of the blue lion to see Hunk gesturing vaguely. "Not a screwdriver, but not _not_ a screwdriver?"

"Oh," Matt says, picks up the long, thin tube with a tiny robot claw at one end for prying out Altean not-screws and a flat end at the other for tapping them into place, and hands it over. "That one?"

"Bingo." 

Matt watches Hunk work for a while, because he always has kind of a hard time looking away. For how big they are, the machinery inside the lions is surprisingly small, delicate, and watching Hunk's big hands move so gently and nimbly is just kind of...soothing, somehow. But he turns back to his terminal eventually, painstakingly copying Pidge's cloaking code line by line into Blue's system. It's not a programming language he recognizes, or even, a language-language; Coran's theory is her link with Green allowed her to tap into the ancient language the lions use. It's a solid theory, the simplest explanation, but there's a part of Matt - a lot of Matt - that would rather believe Pidge learned a new alphabet and language and programming language in fourteen or fifteen quintants. She's that good, which is why she's still definitely alive. Why they both are; Pidge's brain and Shiro's brawn, his smarts and her inability to back down, they're an unkillable combination.

" - tt?- Buddy?"

"Sorry," Matt says, shakes his head a little to clear the fog. Hunk's sitting up, looking at him with that pitying _uh-oh, someone needs cookies_ face he makes at Matt a lot. "Just zoned out a little."

"We could take a break," he says.

Matt sighs. "No, we should get this done. Only being able to cloak one lion is holding us back."

"If you blow yourself up 'cause you couldn't focus that's also probably going to hold us back."

"Touche." Matt glances at the terminal, the endless lines of almost-unintelligible code blurring together a little, and shakes his head again. "I need to finish this, my brain's been all _this is why you can't find her_ and I want to shut it up."

Hunk frowns. "Your brain's just gonna find something else."

"Yeah," Matt says, and shrugs. "And then I'll deal with whatever that is. Gotta keep busy."

Hunk just stares at him, weirdly intimidating considering he's lying on his back a few feet down and Matt's towering over him. He stares, and he squints a little, and he frowns more, and then he sighs.

"Okay, dude," he says. "Hand me the not-a-wrench. No, the slightly wrenchier not-a-wrench."

"Coran would probably label these if we asked."

"That's no fun," Hunk says; he glances at the tool in his hand, and the couple he has set down next to him, and the rewiring he's doing, and the tools again, and there's something kind of intense and sad flickering over his face. Uh-oh, someone needs cookies. "Pidge liked to name them. She could remember what they're called but Coran could tell me six times and I couldn't hold on to it, so I'd ask for the 'not-a-wrench' and she'd be like 'its name is Steve, Hunk' and I'd remember _that_. And Coran got annoyed when I'd ask him for Steve until she was gone, and then he'd get sniffly every time so I stopped."

"Oh," Matt says; he's bad at handling this, the paladins and their feelings about Pidge. The part of him that threw a fucking fit at them after they found him at that graveyard, after they brought him to the Castle, after they told him they brought his little sister to space and then lost her, they found Shiro alive and okay and brought him back out here and right back into the arms of the Galra, that part always, always wants to start screaming again, every single time. 

But he's so tired of being angry, and Hunk's been nothing but good to him and nothing but good to Pidge, and a little bit off-kilter since Keith left, and Matt's...he's tired, he’s just so tired.

"She always goes with Steve," he says, after a pause long enough Hunk's started looking worried again. Matt should start asking Coran to hang out when they work, he's better at knocking them out of these shitty loops they get in. "When she was nine or ten, she got really into building little robots from parts Dad would bring home, and I think like six of them were Steves. She can think circles around me but I'm the creative one."

"Yeah, she named a drone Rover," Hunk says. "I figured."

"Our first dog, too," Matt says. “And I found her backups of the work she did on Shiro's arm, she renamed his hard drive."

"Oh God," Hunk says. "Not Steve."

"Tak-arm-shi."

"Wow," Hunk says. "Wow. _Wow_."

"She's the best," Matt says, tries to hide how choked up he's getting so he doesn't get Hunk going and they don't end up just lying on the floor in the Blue Lion crying. Again. "Also, I think I'm done, but there's maybe a ten percent chance I missed an important line and as soon as we try it we'll blow up the lion."

"Well, if we're lucky, it'll turn out the twenty percent chance I installed this wrong will work in our favor and nothing will happen." Hunk pulls himself and his handful of tools out of the lion's guts and replaces the access panel behind him. "I'll get out and tell you if it works?"

"And then make me cookies?" Matt asks, because Hunk's not allowed to make the _I must soothe this poor boy with cookies_ face if he doesn't follow through.

"Yeah, dude," Hunk says. "I'll make double if it doesn't work."

"And triple if I blow up."

Hunk salutes and makes his way out of Blue, leaving Matt alone to let himself have a little breakdown for a few ticks. Then a few quintants, then he loses track of how long he sits with his head in his hands and his heart pounding its quick, anxious _what if she's dead_ beat. He's starting to wonder, through the ache of missing her - missing them - if Hunk just walked away, left him here to wallow, when he remembers he's the one who has to push the cloak button. As soon as he hits the button, Hunk whoops, and Matt fills up with a weird mix of pride and disappointment - this puts them a few steps ahead, but now he's got one less excuse to spend time digging in the bits of Katie's brain she left behind.

But he's been dismal enough today, so he shuts down his terminal, plasters on a smile, and hops out of Blue with the most genuine fist-pump he can manage. Hunk can probably see through it, but Matt's going to get his comfort cookies anyway so it doesn't matter if he gives Hunk a few more reasons to think he's fragile. 

"You good?" Hunk asks, always checking in, can't just let a guy have his fake smile and flimsy enthusiasm. There are a thousand different right answers to that question, and none of them are yes, but Matt's done being the resident mess for the quintant. For the rest of his life, honestly.

"Good enough," he says, and follows Hunk to the kitchen.


	9. Four

It's the lack of control, more than anything, that's killing Pidge. None of the small freedoms she had before felt like freedom, but now they're gone all Pidge wants is to decide when and how much she wants to eat, when to use the bathroom, when to pull Shiro close and when to curl up against the wall and pretend to be alone. All she wants is to step into the arena and for a few glorious quintants choose for herself whether to live or die. She tried to stop eating, but Vonka put her on an IV and it took her days to convince him she could be trusted to eat on her own again; she pissed herself once because she was so annoyed about how strict her bathroom schedule is and Mertar, her permanent guard now, left her to lie in it overnight. She asked to see Shiro and Sendak laughed in her face; she didn't see him again for a week.

So Pidge behaves, because all the alternatives are worse, and except for the varga every day Vonka makes her exercise for the good of herself and the baby she stays in bed because there's nothing else to do in the little room Sendak's keeping her in. It's only been a couple weeks since the failed escape, but her stomach's already getting a little round, and she spends a lot of time resting her hand on the bulge and trying not to think about anything.

"Three vargas," she hears, as the door slides open; that's longer than usual. Shiro must have done something impressive.

The Champion stalks into the room, still in his torn, bloodied outfit from the arena, chest still heaving, eyes still glinting with that feral spark. Pidge likes it better like this, it means Sendak didn't "reward" him before sending him to Pidge sore and exhausted and miserable. There's a basin of water in the corner and a few rags, but he ignores them in favor of crawling on the bed and nuzzling Pidge's stomach. He's sweet like this, grumbling softly and pressing kisses to her bodysuit until he's had his fill. Pidge pets his hair, tacky with sweat and blood, and lets him take whatever time he needs. The Champion's easier to handle these days than Shiro; she doesn't have anything she's struggling to forgive him for. 

He crawls up the bed, eventually, settles with his head tucked into her neck so he can lick and nuzzle and bite at her, just a little, not quite claiming her but reminding himself that he can. Sometimes it makes Pidge want to goad him into a fight, tilt away and squirm out from under him, make him chase her until he's growling and ready to pin her to the bed, tear their suits off and fuck her into the mattress with his teeth clamped on the back of her neck. She's tired tonight, though, worn out from something Vonka gave her, and she's content with his nibbling and the warm, solid weight of him at her side. She dozes off like that, arm wrapped around him, fingers in his filthy hair, and when she wakes again it's Shiro looking at her.

"Hey," he says. His hand is resting on her belly, tentative, like he's afraid of what's in there, or afraid he's going to hurt it, or afraid of sending Pidge spiraling off into a depressive episode. It would tickle if she weren't dressed; as it is she can barely feel him.

"You okay?" She rests her hand on top of his, forces him to touch her for real. It's less scary when she can pretend he's not scared of it.

"Mostly. A little sore."

"Must have been a good fight."

"I guess," he says. "Or Sendak was in a good mood."

"Is he ever in a good mood that you don't put him in?"

Shiro laughs a little; it's easy like this, when she has so little time with him, when all they do is pretend like they're normal people just catching up with each other, like nothing is bad and nothing is wrong and like neither of them blew their only chance to escape. Pidge misses the constant comfort of Shiro always there within reach, and trying to soak up as much of him as possible when he's here is a good distraction. The only part of the day where she feels like she knows what to do.

"I miss you," he says, and it's easy, too, to let that warm her down to her toes, easy to tilt her head and close her eyes when he leans up to kiss her. There's dried blood on his lips, something pale blue and still sticky, but she doesn't care, just brings her hands up to cup his face, hold him close. Pidge doesn't know what to do, what comes next, what surviving this even means anymore, but she knows the press of Shiro's dry, cracked lips and the warmth of him against her and if nothing else she knows she wants more of it. Maybe the only reason to stay alive is to keep kissing Shiro, even if staying alive means eventually giving another innocent life to the Galra, to Sendak. Maybe she's that selfish.

"I miss you too," she says when he pulls back, quiet, like it's a secret. It's not; he knows it. He's known it. He presses his hand against her stomach a little harder.

"You're bigger every time I see you," he says. "Does it hurt?"

"It's uncomfortable," she says. "But not really."

Shiro nods, and kisses her again, gives in to her silent plea to forget about everything else for a while. Pidge is going to have a baby, she's going to have Shiro's baby, she's going to have it in a Galra prison and Sendak and Vonka and the druids and God knows who else are going to do terrible things to their baby and there's nothing she can do about it. She can't even roll over and die, they won't let her. For a little while every couple of quintants, she can pretend they're Pidge and Shiro from a phoeb ago, just regular arena fighters waiting for what happens next and still hoping for an escape, and that's too precious to give up. She winds her fingers in his hair and holds him close and she doesn't know how long they stay like that but when Mertar opens the door so sentries can escort Shiro back to his cell she has to pull him off Pidge because neither one of them will let go.

*

Every part of Shiro aches, the delicious ache of pushing his body too hard, of a hard-fought battle, of an intense fuck, of being used every way he can possibly be used. If Sendak doesn't put him in a healing pod after this, his entire torso is going to be mottled black and blue by morning, big solid bruises he'll feel every time he moves even if he's careful. Bruises Pidge will frown at, but then dig her fingers into when - if - they fuck because on some level she _gets_ it. 

Sendak isn't touching his bruises but it doesn't matter; Shiro's thighs are stretched so wide over his lap it feels like the muscles might tear, and he's got his artificial hand clamped on Shiro's strained thigh, claws digging in so he bleeds, and the other wrapped around Shiro's throat, a constant threat. Like the way he held Pidge up, like Shiro can make up for letting her down by taking the same punishment for himself. 

He can't, but it's so fucking good anyway he can't bring himself to care. Sendak's cock is so deep inside him Shiro can feel it in the back of his throat, and spread as wide as he is he has no leverage, can't do anything but grind his hips and toss his head back and keep Sendak's cock warm. Shiro doesn't know how long he's been here - his entire life, maybe, he's never been anywhere but at Sendak's mercy - just that every time he gets close Sendak squeezes his throat and the base of his cock and cuts him off from everything his body craves until his head is swimming. 

Sendak tightens his hold on Shiro's thigh, reopens the puncture wounds from his claws so fresh blood spills over Shiro's skin, his body so primed for release even the simple act of bleeding feels good, and thrusts his hips, bouncing Shiro in his lap. Shiro's so overstimulated every time Sendak's cock grinds against his prostate he feels it in his toes, in his fingertips, tingling, aching pleasure that makes him feel like he's going to burst. His throat is sore, bruised from Sendak's hand and raw from begging - when he could still form words - and whining. Sendak's always so good, always makes it so good, finds every weakness Shiro has and tears him apart from there. If this is all the rest of his life is, fighting and fucking, would that be the worst thing in the universe?

"You take it so well," Sendak growls, tightening his grip on Shiro's throat just a little, just a hint. "Such a shame to waste so much of your time on your bitch."

Shiro shakes his head, at least as much as he can, doesn't want - can't let Pidge in to his shitty indulgent giving-up fantasy. The world where he rolls over and gives in to Sendak and the Champion can't have Pidge in it. Shiro rolls his hips, clenches up tight around Sendak's cock, tries to coax him into more fucking, less talking.

"Will you beg for her, when I'm finished with you?"

So no luck there. Sendak moves his hand from Shiro's thigh to his cock; it won't be any use to him, later, if Shiro goes soft when Sendak taunts him about Pidge, if he doesn't humiliate himself getting off to this. The way his legs are spread over Sendak's he feels almost like he's floating, like Sendak is holding him up by his throat and his cock and if he lets go Shiro will fall. He thrusts his hips harder, bounces Shiro in his lap like Shiro doesn't weigh anything at all. Shiro just goes limp for him, lets Sendak use him how he will, the force of his thrusts knocking gasps and grunts out of Shiro's throat.

"Does she like you like this, Champion?" Sendak asks, strokes Shiro's cock harder, faster, all his muscles tightening in anticipation - will he let Shiro come, this time? "Filthy and stinking of someone else's come?"

Shiro tries to rock his hips up into the rough grip of Sendak's metal hand but he has no leverage, tries to grind back against Sendak's cock, take him deeper, but Sendak's holding him too tightly. He whines, squirming uselessly; he'd say yes to anything if Sendak would just let him come.

"Or maybe you beg to see her so she can see how you look when someone _really_ satisfies you," Sendak says. "Because she doesn't, does she? No one does, not like I do."

Sendak tightens his grip just barely to the point of pain and Shiro wails, so close, so close, cock throbbing and dripping all over Sendak's hand, blood roaring in his veins, every nerve in his body screaming that it's too much, it's too good, he can't take any more. He's desperate and he can't move and Sendak grinds his cock in so deep, thick and hot and perfect, no one fills him up like Sendak, no one fucks him like Sendak, nothing has ever been as good as this.

"No," he gasps, "No one, no one, please."

Sendak laughs, bites Shiro's ear hard enough the pain sends him shooting off like a rocket, coming and coming and coming, he doesn't know what they did to him but he's never come so much as he has since he came back, comes so hard he sees stars and his whole body seizes up. Sendak tightens his hand around Shiro's throat, tighter, tighter, and Shiro hangs in that blissful moment of the peak of his orgasm, every part of him dissolving into bliss, until he blacks out.

There are voices, Sendak’s and someone else’s, when Shiro first blinks back into hazy consciousness. If Sendak’s brought someone else here to fuck him - which he hasn’t done since he got Shiro back - hopefully they won’t want him to move much. 

“You’re still rebuilding the station, no one’s seen Emperor Zarkon in phoebs, the prince seems to have no interest in actually ruling in his place, and Voltron is taking back territory at an alarming rate. Is this really where your priorities are?”

“You forget your place,” says a voice straight out of Shiro’s nightmares. His body doesn’t cooperate with the jolt in his brain, but he at least manages to sit up enough to see Sendak speaking to a terminal. So she’s not here, at least, she’s not here, she can’t hurt him, at least not tonight. “I suppose it’s my fault, I should have killed you when my druids disappeared.”

“If you had, I might believe you’re in any position to take action against me.”

“I’m losing my patience, Sendak,” Haggar snarls, and that must be the end of it because the light from the terminal disappears and soon enough Sendak’s back in bed with Shiro. That’s unusual, but maybe Haggar has him feeling possessive.

“Please don’t let her take me,” Shiro says, voice strained and scratchy; talking is a little painful, and Sendak must be able to tell because he smiles, a cruel, small one.

“I used to hate that word,” Sendak says, runs his thumb over Shiro’s lower lip. “The mewling of someone who refuses to stand and face his death with any dignity. It’s so _pretty_ coming from you, though.”

He pets over Shiro’s hair with his big, clumsy paw, an unintentional mockery of the way Pidge pets him with her small, clever hands, slim fingers scratching lightly at his scalp. It still feels good, from Sendak, even if he’s not sure he wants it to..

“She can’t have you,” Sendak says, lower, almost a growl. “No one else can have you.”

When Shiro wakes up again he's in a medical pod in Sendak's quarters; it's dark, and aside from the sentries waiting to help him down he's alone. All of his aches are gone, the ones he earned, the ones Sendak bestowed on him, and he doesn't feel quite right in their absence. The sentries lead him past the closed door of Sendak's bedroom, the dark hallway leading to Pidge's small room, all the way down the halls to the room he used to share with her, cold and empty and with nowhere to hide from his thoughts.

*

There's a small gym in Sendak's quarters, such a normal, human thing for him to have. Aside from the advanced tech and all the glowy purple accents everywhere, it could be any home gym any colleague of her dad's might show off on an after-dinner tour. Pidge can barely picture Sendak in here, broad shoulders taking up all the space, lifting weights to get even bigger, expand and expand until he's so intimidating he can't fit through doorways.

It's the only place other than the bathroom Pidge is allowed to go unless Sendak specifically wants something from her, and it's funny - to the extent anything is funny anymore - that of all places, a gym has turned into the closest thing to a refuge Pidge has. She's not hooked up to anything, there's no reason for Vonka to barge in to take some readings or give her a shot, nobody monitoring her from up close or at a distance.

(Of course there are cameras here, there's cameras everywhere, but having her every move recorded and watched doesn't feel so bad when the rest of the time they're tracking her heartbeat, blood pressure, the electrical impulses in her brain.)

After Allura's first attempt to train them, after Pidge kept not being good enough, and not being good enough, and not being willing enough, after she came out the other side of the biggest test of her life having failed, she'd gone to Shiro. She already felt so safe with him, after so little time; maybe she was a little desperate to feel safe after being torn from her home, after realizing she was going to have to start making good on all her _anything it takes_ promises to find Matt and her dad. Maybe just because Shiro's so _Shiro_ all the time. Either way, she could bring all her weakness to him in a way she couldn't to anyone else, not even Matt or her parents. 

Pidge stretches, all her muscles tight and unhappy from all the time in bed. The same stretching routine Shiro did back in their room, the one he ran through every time he spent the day working out from anxiety or from the arena drugs, the one he pushed her to join him in after the treatments started making her so tired. She can feel his hands on her when she goes through the motions, helping her to the right position, to get more stretch. Or, sometimes, to tickle her, or tease her through her suit, his two best ways of distracting her for a while. The pull of her muscles isn't as good as his hands on her, or falling over laughing until he relented and kissed her, but it's what she has. She can't count on Shiro now, not with Sendak keeping them apart.

There's a mirror taking up most of one wall; Pidge tries not to look at it, not even out of the corner of her eye. It's the first one she's seen since they've gotten here and the first time she stopped to look at herself, all wiry muscle and long, shaggy hair and round belly, she felt like she was looking at a stranger. She crouches with her back to it to fiddle with the settings on the dumbbells, stays that way while she lifts, and when she finally sets the weights down, and when she moves to the treadmill. Running feels the most like freedom, the pound of her feet and the breeze through her hair even though the air in the room is still, the sweat beading up and dripping down her forehead. She runs, and runs, and tries not to think about how she wasn't fast enough to escape when speed is almost always her only advantage. 

"You won't want to try fighting like I do," Shiro had said, "though if you really set your mind to overpowering your enemies I'm not sure I'd bet against you."

"It's weird thinking of myself as someone who has enemies."

"You'll get used to it the thirtieth or fortieth time one of them tries to kill you," he'd said, flashed that stupidly handsome grin at her. "We can run through some settings on the gladiator, find the right setup for you to train your way."

"I'm kind of terrified of that thing," she'd said, handed over more of her weakness. "I don't think I'll be much of a fighter."

"I don't know, I saw the look on your face when you electrocuted Lance. You're out for blood." He laid his hand on her shoulder, heavy and warm. "You need to be able to defend yourself, Pidge. One of us won't always be there to have your back."

Pidge's chest aches; she's probably going to get a lecture from Vonka about overdoing it, about how fragile humans are, about how thoroughly and intensely punished she'll be if she jeopardizes the life growing inside of her. She slows down, and the treadmill matches her pace, so smooth it's like it's part of her. She jogs for a little while, slow and easy, cools herself down, and by the time she steps down Mertar is banging on the door. Her varga of feeling like a person for the day is over.

*

Shiro's a little bit in love with Pidge's naked body, above and beyond everything else he feels for her. It's the vulnerability, sure, and it usually means she’s about to drive everything bad out of his head and replace it with so much good, but it's more than that. He runs his hands down her leg slowly, working the stiffness out of her muscles inch by inch, digs his fingers in to tight thighs and calves and the arches of her feet until she whimpers and gasps and melts for him. She's not so skinny anymore, not so gangly, but her freckles and moles are all the same, her hairy legs and armpits and cunt are all the same, and she's just so _human_. Shiro hasn’t felt human since he woke up on Earth, after everything the changed about him; looking at Pidge, so human after everything they’ve done to her, makes him feel a little less like a monster.

Pidge pokes him with her toes. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he says, squeezes the foot he's holding and lays it back down on the bed. "As I ever am. Just thinking."

She tilts her head, curious, but doesn't ask; he must not be worrying her too much, if she's not going to push, not going to make him talk if he doesn't want to.

"There's no way they meant it when they said we could have a whole night, right?"

"No," she says, sits up with more than a little struggle. Shiro doesn't try to help her, tries not to call attention to the rapidly growing elephant in the room. She's too big, this soon, shouldn't be having this kind of trouble for a couple more phoebs. He knew they claimed to have shortened the gestational period, but it's going so fast Shiro starts panicking if he thinks about it too long. "But there's nothing we can do about it."

Shiro nods; he knows, of course he knows, but it's hard, when he's with her now, to talk about anything but how long they'll have and how soon he'll be alone again. He'd gotten - it's his biggest weakness, he knows, how badly he copes with isolation, but this time around Sendak went so long without exploiting it Shiro kind of forgot it was inevitable. He was better at being alone before - no, he was better at pretending to believe Sendak when he offered companionship. Still, it was easier.

Pidge kicks him again; he catches her foot and raises it so he can press a kiss to her ankle. 

"Gross," she says. "It's your turn, where are you sore?"

"My shoulders are kind of a mess."

Pidge pushes up to her knees, more gracefully than he'd expect, and Shiro shifts to sit on the foot of the bed with his back to her. She shuffles closer to him, close enough he can feel her presence even though they're not touching anywhere but where the roundest part of her belly brushes against his back, and lifts her hand to rest on the zipper of his bodysuit.

"Can I?"

For a tick, Shiro thinks about saying no; he's feeling weak enough as it is without stripping away the safety net that keeps him from seeing all the evidence of what he's been through. But he spends so little time with Pidge, less with her skin against his, and she'd never demand this of him or resent him for saying no but he trusts her with so much of himself and it always feels better, eventually, when he trusts her with this, too. He nods, and she drags the zipper down slowly enough he has plenty of time to change his mind. Instead he stands up when she gets to his waist and strips the suit off entirely, lets his skin breathe, and sits back down.

"Good," she says, presses a soft kiss behind his ear. "Thank you."

He ignores the urge to wiggle happily at the praise; Sendak's praise gets the same reaction out of him and it feels like dirtying something precious when he associates the two.

Pidge is strong enough now it hurts when she digs her fingers in, the best kind of hurt, deep and achy and intense and, when she lets go, gone in an instant, with all the soreness he'd been carrying around. Shiro doesn't bother to stifle himself because she never does, when he hurts the pain out of her, groans as deep and low and long as he needs. He closes his eyes while she works him over, lets the pain and the relief wash over him, savors every place they're touching. Even the brush of her stomach doesn't bring him out of it.

There's an alternate reality, he thinks, where it's the best thing he's ever felt; where none of this happens and he and Pidge get to find all the parts of them that fit together naturally, fall in love the way Shiro had with Adam, once, slow and inexorable. Where she never had to see the worst of the darkness in him and he never needed to know she'd be okay with it, and show him her own darkness, and where they only needed to take comfort in each other after hard-fought battles. Where if Pidge was this pregnant they'd be laughing about silly name ideas and Shiro could tease her about how soon he'd have to carry her everywhere because she'd be too top-heavy to walk.

"Hey," Pidge says, soft and quiet, breath tickling his ear; she slips her hand up to his face, and Shiro opens his eyes to see tears collecting on her fingers. Oh. "Wanna talk?"

"Not really," Shiro says. What would he even say to her, anymore, that isn't _I think I've given up_ or a lie? Pidge hums and goes back to rubbing his shoulders, gentle sweeps of her hands now that most of the tension is gone. He'd looked at her in the hangar and thought _she won't make it without me_ and he'd been wrong and they're both going to pay for it maybe for the rest of their lives. Sendak would have blown that ship out of the sky as soon as Shiro hit open space but that might have been for the best.

"Breathe, Shiro," she says, such a firm command that his body obeys before his brain catches up. The air feels good in his lungs, clears his head a little; was he holding his breath? For how long? Shit. Pidge scoots back a little, all of a sudden not touching him anywhere, and he wants to beg her not to leave him but there's a lump in his throat. She doesn't leave him too long, puts her hands on his shoulders and pulls a little until he gets the picture and lies down. He even manages to scoot up the bed on his own without any coaxing and settle against the pillows. Shiro's so fucking tired, and Pidge's bed is so comfortable. "Better?"

"Yeah," he says, and she smiles at him, a sad little smile that makes him want to kiss her just so he doesn't have to see it, to think about upsetting her. She cuddles up next to him, skin a little chilly everywhere she presses against him, like always.

"I don't know what happens next," Pidge says, "but I'm not going to die here. This baby isn't going to die here, unless I find a way to abort it before it has to suffer. You're not going to die here. I'm sorry I - you've carried me enough. I can be the Shiro for a little while."

Shiro laughs a little, but it doesn't feel right, and rolls over so he can curl around Pidge and bury his face in her neck. She smells like sweat and unwashed hair, and if he closes his eyes he can almost pretend their sizes are reversed, that when he opens them again she’ll be able to wrap him up entirely and keep him safe. 

"I'm bad at being alone," he says.

"I'm sorry." Pidge combs her hand through his hair, so practiced at soothing him. "You let the Champion get you through it, before?"

"Mostly. It was easier when I could just be him all the time."

"Do what you need to do, Shiro," she says. "You know I can handle him."

Shiro just sighs, pushes his face into her neck more, until he can't breathe in anything but the smell of her, rests his hand on her belly like he can keep the baby, keep either of them, safe, and lets himself fall asleep without a struggle for the first time in weeks.

*

Mertar coming in to the room and demanding Vonka unhook all the monitoring equipment and the couple of IVs she's on could mean anything, probably none of it good. Mertar herding Pidge down the hall and insisting she shower might be ominous, or it might just mean they've made her go long enough even the shitty Galran sense of smell can't handle her anymore. On the up side, the sonic shower is actually kind of refreshing when it feels like it's washing off this many layers of dried sweat. She'd kill for an actual bath; if she and Shiro hadn't been separated she'd tease him about doing it for her, and then he might actually do it. He killed - or worse - to get her extra pillows, once; she's never felt as guilty about that as she should.

When Pidge finally steps out of the shower Mertar has a fresh bodysuit and shirt waiting for her. Getting dressed feels a little like torture, the compression of the bodysuit more uncomfortable every day, the bigger and bigger shirts they bring her falling off her shoulders and pulling too-tight across her stomach. When she gets out of here, when Voltron's saved the universe and has time to come for them, when Matt and her dad come riding in on stolen Galra warships, she's never going to wear clothes ever again. Or get pregnant.

"Sendak wants to have dinner with you," Mertar says, while Pidge fights with her bodysuit.

"What? Why?"

Mertar shrugs; Pidge didn't really expect an answer. The 'why' of anything with Sendak is to amuse himself, it doesn't matter what he does or doesn't tell his underlings. He wants to look at how uncomfortable she is, or fuck with her head for an evening, or - or. There's nothing she can really do about it now, though, except try not to make him angry. 

Sendak's sitting room is set up like he's entertaining some special guest, the table set with a thick cloth and fine dishes and an odd, glowing centerpiece. Sendak's already sitting at the table, holding court like a king on a throne.

"Thank you for joining me," he says, like she had a choice, as a sentry pulls out a chair for her. Another one brings her a drink, thick and pink and sweet-smelling like the ones Sendak gave her in his box, once.

"Oh, I - it's bad for the, um, bad for the baby," she says.

Sendak waves his hand, and the sentry sets the glass down despite her protests. "I'm sure our inebriants are more refined than whatever swill you drink on your planet. Vonka has assured me it's fine."

Great guy, that Vonka. Pidge sighs and takes a sip; when she does what he wants sometimes Sendak's almost nice to her. So Pidge drinks, to make him happy, and so she doesn't have to talk, and maybe downing half a glass on an empty stomach wasn't the best idea because she's already lightheaded when the sentries set dinner in front of them. It's the same thing she's had every meal since she got pregnant, which is the same thing she had every meal before that but there's more of it. Sendak has something else, and Pidge is so desperate for variety her mouth waters at the burnt, acrid smell of it.

The door opens, and Sendak grins that awful, sharky grin of his at her; Pidge is a little scared to see what makes him so cruelly pleased but she can't stop herself from looking.

It's Shiro - it's the Champion, but he's wearing clean clothes and isn't covered in the blood and grime of the arena so it's harder to tell the difference than usual. His left leg drags as the sentries walk him into the room, and when they let go he's limping a little.

"A few quintants ago he nearly had his leg torn off in a fight," Sendak says, before Pidge can ask. "He's been in a healing pod since, I’m sure he’s just stiff."

Pidge swallows hard, takes another sip of her drink. She can't - she doesn't think about what happens, could happen, might happen to Shiro in the quintants between their short time together, because not being able to see him every night, run her hands over him and find every injury too small to bother with a pod and every tender spot left over from the big injuries that needed healing right away. She doesn't get to make sure he's whole every night anymore. Anything could happen to him anytime and she wouldn't know until Sendak decided he wanted her to.

"Would have been a shame to send him to the druids for a new leg," Sendak says, laughing. "We might never get him back."

The _we_ makes her stomach turn over; she tries to disguise the nausea by cutting into her food, pretending to be eager to eat. She’ll has to push past it anyway; she hates what they do to her when she doesn't eat. The Champion crosses the room, aimed straight for her like a missile, and oh Pidge missed him but the idea of Sendak seeing how sweet he is when they've been apart, when he nuzzles at her stomach and makes little content noises - it'll spoil it. Luckily Sendak snaps his fingers and points to his feet, and the Champion only hesitates for half a tick before changing course and kneeling where Sendak pointed. One of the sentries brings out a bowl, the same food Pidge has but already cut into bite-sized chunks, and for a sickening moment she thinks Sendak's going to make Shiro eat off the floor.

The sentry hands the bowl to Sendak, though, and Sendak holds out a chunk of meat for the Champion to take. It's not a lot better, but it's something, some tiny shred of dignity to at least being allowed to kneel upright. Pidge tries to ignore it, the flash of Shiro's pink tongue when he takes a bite and the way he looks at her out of the corner of his eyes, ignores him and focuses on eating her dinner. Sendak lets her, which is a relief, doesn't try to draw her attention or tease her for looking away or make conversation until she's set down her fork and pushed her plate away.

"He told me once you're more than a match for him," Sendak says. "I didn't see it. But he must have seen in you what I've only just now begun to see." Shiro takes another bite from Sendak's fingers, dark eyes fixed on Sendak burning with whatever cocktail of things Sendak makes him feel, disgust and loathing and the deep, primal arousal he used to confess to Pidge quietly in the night; the flicker of admiration and the warmth that flashes when Sendak praises him. When Shiro thinks of the Champion he seems to think of him as out of control, always, but he's controlled himself for Pidge and he's controlling himself for Sendak. Pidge can see the effort of kneeling, of behaving, in the set of his jaw, the tension in his neck, his arms nearly vibrating with the need to break out and fight. But he doesn't.

What would happen if she asked him to, told him to attack Sendak? He's done it for her before. Which of them has a better hold on him?

"And what's that?" Pidge asks, tears her eyes from the Champion to look at Sendak while she takes another sip of the sweet drink she'd been so sure she would refuse.

"Humanity is poison to greatness. It's rare any of you have any potential at all, and when someone does it's stifled out of them." Sendak feeds Shiro another bite; Shiro growls, bristling, but gentles when Sendak slaps his cheek lightly. He's no pet but he knows who his master is. He wouldn't growl at Pidge, though. "He couldn't thrive, not until we found him, not until I stripped away his weakness."

"I don't know what that has to do with me," Pidge says; Sendak grins. He's always grinning at her.

"Most humans shy from greatness when they see it," he says. "But _you_ revel in it. Your instinct is to prove your own power by controlling his. It's very Galra of you."

Pidge doesn't know what to say, so she takes another sip of her drink, and looks at the Champion so she doesn't have to look at Sendak's awful smirking face. He's not - he's not entirely wrong, is the thing, and they both know it. And that's where Sendak lives, where he thrives, when he sees the worst of you and indulges it until you can't pretend it isn't there. She's going to take care of Shiro, to keep him safe, but the thing that sits uneasy in her stomach isn't Sendak making him perform like this to torture them both; it's that her Champion is kneeling at someone else's feet. Someone who isn't good enough to earn his submission, isn't worthy of it. Pidge wants Shiro safe back in his room, but not before she makes him crawl to her, eat from her hand, makes it clear who in this room all that greatness really belongs to.

She drinks deeper, drains her glass, and a sentry is right there at her shoulder to refill it. Maybe it's only safe in small quantities, maybe if she drinks too much - just enough - something will go wrong. Maybe Sendak will throw Vonka in the pit, and when Shiro tears him apart it will be for Pidge and no one else.

Sendak laughs - Pidge can't begin to guess at what - and snaps his fingers; Shiro bristles again but her crawls under the table to kneel beside her. Where he belongs, even if this is just Sendak taking away her chance to prove he'd come when called. She runs her fingers through his hair, scratches behind his ears and pets him until he relaxes a little. Not much, not with Sendak watching, but it's enough.

"It's almost cute," Sendak says, "watching the two of you play at being the mighty warrior and the power behind the throne. Like when pets try to sit at the dinner table. Is it because you're the rare humans who could be something, given the right guidance, that you wish so badly to be like us? Or do all humans crave what they're too cowardly to take?"

Pidge doesn't know what he wants to hear, so she doesn't say anything; it's the wrong choice. Sendak frowns and stands up, casting his massive shadow across the table. It's easy to forget just how big he is, when he's sitting down. She doesn't know if she's upset him, or just bored him, or if this was always part of his game for the evening, and Pidge hates not knowing more than anything. Well. Not more than Sendak, or Vonka, or watching Shiro treated like this, or being here at all, but. She's afraid of Sendak, however brave she wants to be she's okay admitting that, and he's a thousand times scarier when she can't begin to guess at his next move.

His next move is to stand behind her chair, to roughly yank it away from the table and turn it so she's facing Shiro. His big paws come to rest on her shoulders, claws putting just enough pressure on her through the shirt and suit to make sure she knows it'll hurt if she moves.

"I wonder if you even know you're only playing," Sendak says. "You think you're so clever, do you understand how far beneath us you are? Or do you think because your broken-in hero submits to you you're something like me?"

"I don't - " Pidge cuts herself off when Sendak grabs her shirt by the neckline and tears it down the back, pushes it off her shoulders to fall at her feet. Oh. Pidge bites her lip and braces herself; she's not used to this, yet, he doesn't do this to her that much. Drug-fueled fight-fucking with Shiro for his entertainment aside, at least. Sendak unzips her suit, roughly pushes it off her shoulders, until the Champion shuffles forward and reaches up to strip her the rest of the way. He's looking at Pidge, not Sendak, eyes glinting hungry and eager the way that always gets her wet; her Champion isn't following orders, he just wants her. It's okay. She just has to focus on him, easy enough as he leans forward and nips at her thighs.

Sendak reaches down, digs his claws in just above her pubic hair and rakes them up her round stomach, all the way to her collarbone. The harsh red stripes, dotted with blood, across the stretched-tight swell of her makes her sick, nauseated in a way she can't quite explain. She whines for him, knows better than to hold back when he wants a reaction. 

The Champion growls at her, low rumble deep in his throat that's more like the way he groans for a really good massage than anything else, and bites at her thigh hard enough to make her yelp. He grabs her other thigh with his metal hand, hard enough to leave a red handprint on her skin, pushes it away to spread her open for him. Pidge shivers when he licks over the bite mark he left with soft, broad strokes; shivers harder when he looks up at her like he's going to eat her alive. It's too bad Sendak would probably stop him if he tried to rip her out of the chair, throw her on the floor so he could have his way with her.

When Shiro puts his mouth on her it's like he's working some kind of magic, instantly transmuting everything she's feeling - good, bad, forgettable - into some perfect blissful complement to the warm, wet pressure of his tongue. The discomfort of Sendak forcing this on her is just the thrill of an audience, of showing off how good her Champion is, how incredible he makes her feel; Sendak's claws, the real ones sharper than the metal, just make her skin tingle, same as the red marks he left behind. Pidge thrives on singleminded focus but Shiro makes her aware of _everything_ , and makes it all part of the experience. She can't see him over the swell of her stomach, and fuck she loves looking at him but having that taken away just amplifies everything.

Her Champion is sloppy where Shiro is all precision, broad wet strokes of his tongue and messy, sucking kisses anywhere, everywhere he can reach. She's always so wet for him, making a mess of herself before he gets the chance, but he leaves her feeling drenched, his spit and her juices dripping to the floor. If she could see his face she knows just how covered he would be, shining with her slick from his chin to his cheekbones, setting off the drowning man gasping for air desperation in his eyes. But she can't see him, all she can do is clench up when he pushes his tongue inside her and listen to him groan. 

The claws digging in to her shoulders tighten when she squirms, never letting her forget her audience. Pidge rolls her hips in counterpoint to Shiro's thrusts, rocking against his face like she does his hips when he's buried his cock inside her, letting him - helping him - fuck her as hard and deep as he possibly can. Sometimes he pushes deep and stays there, curling his tongue like he's trying to drink as much of her up as possible, wiggling it around to find all her most sensitive spots. Then without warning he pulls out and thrusts back in again, so surprisingly strong with just his tongue. His lips press up against her hole in an obscene kiss, the slurping sounds so loud in the quiet room. He sucks on her and with his tongue so deep inside her it's intense enough to make Pidge cry out.

Sendak digs his claws in, hard, scratches up her shoulders slow and deep enough she feels every second of her skin splitting open; he grunts, satisfied, when she cries out for him, too. Shiro pulls out to lap over her again, hot wet tongue and heavy breathing and blood dripping down her skin and Pidge can't figure out which sensations are which. No wonder Shiro likes pain so much. Pidge is burning up everywhere, cunt throbbing, shoulders throbbing, her blood pumping thick and loud in her veins and her clit so hard it almost hurts. The Champion wraps his lips around it and hums, pleased; the vibration might kill her.

The ever-present chill in the air raises goosebumps on Pidge's skin, colder in contrast to the heat consuming her, and Shiro sucks her clit hard, a steady unrelenting force to just pull the orgasm right out of her, and Sendak smears blood down her chest when he reaches to paw over her tits. Her nipples are so sensitive she whines at the roughness of his hands, whines when Shiro points his tongue and teases at the tip of her clit, whines and whines because there's nothing she can do but sit there between them and feel as much as they want her to, whether she can handle it or not. 

Just as it's cresting, just as all the too much is about to explode right out of her, Sendak digs his claws into her tits and barks an order to stop, so deep and commanding Pidge stops moving and holds her breath before she realizes he isn't talking to her.

"Back away," he says, and Shiro growls but he crawls backwards, he was so hot between her legs the loss of him makes her shiver, hard. Sendak grips her tighter, harder, until his claws break the skin, until she lets out that breath she was holding in a pained gasp, and he backs away, too, leaves her entirely alone and still riding the edge of orgasm. Shiro's - the Champion's kneeling in front of her, face a mess, muscles straining with the effort it takes to stay kneeling instead of charging forward to bury his face in her cunt again. He's such a good boy.

"He's not yours," Sendak says, bending low to speak close to her ear. "Nothing here belongs to you, and none of it is in your control."

Pidge lifts a hand to her stomach, and Sendak rests his big organic hand over hers, covering it completely, and presses his claws in just enough to make the skin go white from the pressure. Not even that. He lifts Pidge with a hand under each armpit, like she's an unruly toddler, and dumps her a few steps away near the door back to her room. She manages to stay on her feet, just barely, and she forces a little smile at Shiro so he thinks she's okay, so he doesn't worry, or misbehave and get himself punished. 

"Your guard will escort you back to your room," Sendak says. "Get out of my sight."

Mertar grabs her arm and drags her out without giving her a chance to get her bodysuit; the last thing Pidge sees as the door closes is Sendak picking Shiro up by his throat. _But he was so good_ , she thinks, stupidly, numbly.

"I can’t put you in a healing pod," Mertar says, probably the most she's ever spoken to Pidge. "But you can shower."

Pidge almost thanks her but it's a stupid thing to be thankful for. It'll be nice not to have to sleep covered in her own blood and the slick mess from Shiro's mouth, but it shouldn't be a fucking treat. Not for the first time she aches for a real shower, hot water to drown out the world and wash her blood down the drain so she can watch it, see it disappear. When the other paladins burst in on their lions like knights in shining armor and bring her back to the castle, she's going to give Coran two quintants to find her a real shower or she's getting in Green and running away back to Earth just as fast as she can.

Thinking about rescue hurts. Thinking about Shiro hurts. Trying to make herself come to relieve all the tension coiled up in her muscles hurts because she thinks of Shiro when she touches herself. Pidge stands in the sonic shower, blinking back tears and fighting the voice in her head that reminds her how small and useless she is. until the wounds all over her torso stop bleeding. Maybe tomorrow Vonka will lecture her about losing so much blood, like it's something she did all by herself; maybe tomorrow she'll find a way to escape her bonds and jam one of his syringes in his eye.

*

Things get blurrier, the longer Shiro lets the Champion take over. Sometimes he blinks and he feels like himself again but he keeps doing whatever it is he's doing - tearing someone to pieces, sucking Sendak's cock, biting a deep bruise into Pidge's neck because he can - like he's still got that safe layer of detachment. He knows, from experience, that it doesn't really matter. He’s remembered enough at this point to know this happened before, too, and all the Shiro memories faded away as surely as the Champion's. Easier to let it blur than to spend all his time fighting to be Shiro, having to battle back the darkness and actually feel every shitty thing Sendak wants him to feel, exhausting himself, or to be the Champion all the time, all instinct and no control and he doesn't feel the shitty things but the only things that make him feel anything are violent or extreme, and even those feelings never last very long.

He's Shiro, right now, but he wasn't a second ago, wasn't when the sentries pushed him into Pidge's room. She never complains about the Champion, she swears she doesn't mind, and Shiro doesn't have any reason not to believe her (he remembers, in flashes, the blissed-out look in her eyes when he fucked her throat, the way she squealed when he took her, the look in her eyes before she ran just to let him chase her; he knows exactly how she feels about the worst of him), but he knows he's exhausting.

Shiro's memories don't stick very well anymore, his or the Champion's; time passes in jumps and starts, and he never quite knows what day it is or how long he's been wherever he comes to. They might only be giving him ten doboshes at a time with Pidge, spaced phoebs apart, and he'd never know. His last strong memory of her is from when he was on his knees, letting Sendak hurt her, failing at the one thing he promised her and not even caring about that so much as how pretty her skin looked, torn apart and bloody. The puncture wounds from his claws are mostly gone, the scars nearly invisible, and the scratch marks on her shoulders almost fully healed, scarring up the way Sendak likes. Her breasts aren't bruised a mottled purple and too sensitive to touch anymore. It might have been a phoeb since he last remembers seeing her, or it might have been yesterday and she's been in a medical pod.

The Champion had settled, like he always does, curled up at her side with his head and organic hand on her belly. Shiro worries, all the time, about how big she's gotten so quickly, about what it's going to do to her when she gives birth in whatever absurd time frame they've set, but the Champion just likes it, the skin pulled tight and striped with stretch marks, the rush of blood he swears he can hear when he presses his ear to her stomach, the pride of having done this to her and the intense, all-consuming love because she's doing this for him. Shiro knows better, but for once he thinks the Champion might have the right idea. Shiro sits up a little, so he can look at Pidge and she can see in his eyes who he is.

"Hey," she says, with a soft smile; there's something off about it, shadows in her eyes, but even a fake smile is a pretty good sign. "I wasn't sure I'd get both of you tonight."

"How long do we have?" Shiro asks.

"About half a varga, you've been here about one and a half."

"He needs to stop hogging you," Shiro grumbles, scooting up the bed so his head is on the pillow and he can give her a quick kiss while she laughs.

"I'll pass that on," she says, starts petting his hair. She does it automatically, now, when he gets close enough, a part of her always taking care of him. He hopes there's something for her like that, something he does without thinking that makes her feel just a little soft and warm and safe no matter what else is happening. Shiro brings his hand up to rest on her belly again, tracing lazy swirls with his fingertips; the baby starts kicking, one of the only things that can make Shiro smile, and he keeps his fingers moving, tries to see if the baby will chase him. Pidge is smiling, too, even with her organs in the line of fire. "Think they'll let us name it?"

"No," Shiro says, because Pidge already knows that. "But they're just going to call him 'Human Experiment X' or something, so we can do whatever we want."

"Maybe they'll call him Sendak Jr."

"Has a nice ring to it," Shiro says, presses a kiss to her shoulder. "Shiro Jr."

"Champion Jr."

"Good," Shiro says, "powerful."

"Voltron Jr."

"Even more powerful."

"Do you think," Pidge says, and stops. bites her lip. She tightens her fingers a little in Shiro's hair, a reflex when she's thinking too hard, and rests her hand on top of his on her stomach. Time to stop antagonizing the baby into pummeling her spleen, or whatever. "If this hadn't happened, if you got to live your life the way you were supposed to, and you were having a baby just as part of that, what would you name it?"

"If this hadn't happened, I wasn't going to have kids. Adam didn't care much either way, and I couldn't even picture the condition I'd be in by thirty."

"Oh," Pidge says. "Right. Sorry."

"Don't be," Shiro says. "I'll play along. In this hypothetical perfect, no-tragedy no-disease future, would I be having a baby with you?"

"Whoever you want," she says. 

"Obviously we'd name him Matt Jr.," Shiro says, "so Matt wouldn't be able to name his own kid that."

"Oh, perfect. He'd be so annoyed about it _and_ so annoyed about being annoyed about it."

"Matthew Champion Voltron Holt, Jr.," Shiro says. "I think we nailed it."

Pidge laughs, a real one, a good one, high and clear like - not bells, exactly, like an old computer trying to mimic bells, one of the dusty sound effects history teachers would play in a lesson about how shitty computers used to be. 

"I like when you laugh," he says, because he does, and she squeezes his hand. The darkness is starting to creep in, the shame of being happy even for a second when they're in the position they're in, but he takes a deep breath, another, and pushes it back. He can let it have him as soon as he leaves, it'll just sink into the rest of the haze of all the time he isn't himself and all the time he isn't around Pidge who reminds him he's human, but he only has a few minutes left with her tonight and the darkness can't fucking have them.

*

"I don't like the look of that," Vonka mutters to himself, looking at a screen while he passes a scanner over Pidge's stomach. She doesn't ask; he wouldn't bother to tell her. If something's really wrong, maybe she'll miscarry and if she's really lucky they'll give her a little time to recover before they make her try again. And if it's just something that makes the Galra think it's defective, maybe they won't let the baby live and it won't have to suffer whatever they’re going to do with it. Most likely, though, it's something completely normal for human babies and Vonka just doesn't know any better. He keeps getting upset about how small its hands and feet are; apparently Galra babies are like puppies who have to grow into their paws.

The scanner sliding over her stomach is kind of soothing, warm, smooth metal tracing the same kind of circles Shiro does. Pidge is a little bit touch-starved, a feeling she's having a hard time adjusting to after a lifetime of preferring to be alone, and Vonka's hands make her skin crawl but his scanner is close enough to real touch it's almost nice.

"Would you like to see it?" Vonka asks.

"See - "

"The child," Vonka says. "Of course you wouldn't be familiar with the idea, I assume this technology is a bit beyond humans."

Pidge almost argues with him, because if nothing else this place hasn't been able to take away her burning need to correct people, but it's pointless, and if he's going to kind of sort of be nice to her she shouldn't waste it.

"I would," she says, and he just nods and turns his cart so she can see the terminal. It's a lot like an Earth ultrasound, maybe a little more detailed, a little bit pinker (does _everything_ need to be fuchsia?), but recognizable. Recognizable as a baby, a baby growing inside her - a baby almost totally grown, by now - and it's not like she's been clinging very hard to denial anymore but that's...a lot. Her baby, moving around a little, pulsing with her heartbeat, small and alien and alive.

It's not that she regrets hoping it would die, or suddenly doesn't hope for that anymore, but it's less theoretical all of a sudden. It would still be better for it to blink painlessly out of existence before the Galra get their hands on it, but Pidge has been able to think that before without blinking back tears. She's being strong, but what is she going to _do_?

Vonka chuckles a little. "I should have expected such an emotional response. Try not to overexert yourself."

Pidge wants to argue with that, too, but if Vonka thinks she's so weak she might hurt the baby while lying still in bed that might spare her from more evenings with Sendak. Might have spared her some already.

"Human babies develop their sex in the womb, correct?"

"Yeah."

"Galra don't for a few deca-phoebs. Sendak wants to know, and I don't know what I'm looking for to tell him."

"Oh," she says, and points at the screen. "Those three little lines down there, those are it's genitals. It's female."

"Is it common for humans to refer to their young as 'it'? I'd never refer to another Galra that way."

Shiro won't say 'it'; Pidge has overheard enough conversations about the Champion and how it performs, how brutal it is, how maybe none of the half-starved prisoner fighters can take it down but _this_ guard could to know why. It's not a word that sits quite right in her own mouth, but even once the baby was real to her she couldn't - can't - let it be human, not yet.

"We don't have a gender-neutral pronoun," she lies, because Vonka will believe anything she says about how primitive humans are. He doesn't press her any further, just mutters _ridiculous_ under his breath and turns the cart back so only he can see the screen. Pidge almost asks him to turn it back, for just a dobosh, but she won't give him that weakness.

Vonka doesn't say anything the rest of the time, back to treating her like a piece of furniture he's thinking about reupholstering. Pidge doesn't cry, and like usual she doesn't wince or complain or respond at all when he lubes up a sensor and pushes it inside her, when he inserts a long needle into her stomach and takes a sample of something that isn't blood. Shiro wants her to ask him how much longer she has, but he knows how hard it is to get answers and he won't care if she doesn't ask. Based on the size of the baby, and how much of a _baby_ it looked like, probably not too long. She kind of wants to ask what it's going to be like - do Galra relish the pain of birth and she won't get any painkillers? That seems...likely. Maybe they'll give her a hallucinogen so she won't know anything is happening, or so many numbing agents she won't be able to feel anything below her neck, or put her under so they can just cut it out of her. They don't trust humans to be capable of much, why would they leave the birth up to her own ability to push?

Maybe Vonka would tell her that one, but she won't ask, because all she really wants to know is if Shiro will be there and she doesn't know how she'll keep herself going if Vonka tells her he won't be, that they're going to make her do this all alone.

Pidge is tired of being alone.

*

Blood is roaring through the Champion's veins, so fast and hard he can almost map out the network of veins under his skin just by feel. There's a sharp pain at his side, and when he looks down he's a little surprised to see blood barely trickling out of the long slash, not gushing onto the floor. It's a good hurt, the sharp hurts are always better than the deep ones, and he almost wants to ask if there's someone else he can fight. They never let him, though.

The sentries bring him to the infirmary, not up to Sendak's quarters; disappointing, when he's this fired up. He'd like it tonight, love it, rough hands and thick cock and so much more of the pain he's so happy with. The Champion would be so good for him and maybe he'd even get to see Pidge after. Instead he's going to get patched up and all the adrenaline will leave him in a rush and if he's lucky he won't slip into Shiro again before he manages to fall asleep.

A guard is waiting in the infirmary, the same one who's always posted outside Pidge's door. He knows how unlikely it is he'll get to see Pidge without making Sendak happy first, so she wouldn't be down here unless - no, they wouldn't waste a guard to tell him something's wrong. She could die in that room and no one would tell Shiro until Sendak wanted to hurt him with it. She's probably just changed assignments.

She takes Shiro - ugh, he's coming out of it - by the arm and marches him over to one of the doctors. 

"Are any of his wounds in need of urgent care?"

"Doesn't look like it," she says. "Hiding anything?"

"No?"

"He won't bleed too much?" asks the guard, poking roughly at the slash across his ribs. "I know they're fragile."

"Ideally I’d heal it up," says the doctor, "but no."

The guard nods and pulls Shiro away, down the hall and deeper into the station.

"Sendak has given you permission to attend the birth," she says, as they pass Shiro's room. "Unfortunately you were already fighting when I was sent for you."

"Could've stopped the fight," he says, like an idiot; she just snorts and walks a little faster, pulls him along. The adrenaline spike and the rush of anxiety about Pidge are pushing him back out of his head and he lets himself go, would rather be the primal, salivating Champion as long as he can than panicking Shiro. The Champion longs to get to the delivery room and shove everyone else out of the way, pull his baby out with his own two hands so Pidge doesn't have to hurt very long, kill everyone who dares to touch her in this state.

"Easy," the guard says; he's growling. He has every right to growl, after everything. "If you can't control yourself they won't let you stay, and no one should have to do this alone. Galra give birth surrounded by their families - this is barbaric."

The Champion growls again. Everything they've done to Pidge has been barbaric, and this guard has been there through almost all of it, escorting Pidge to her treatments and to the arena and to those miserable insemination sessions, stood by the door stone-faced when Sendak tore her apart on a power trip. But if he gets kicked out, if he can't be with Pidge for this, he won't ever forgive himself. 

So he walks, and he breathes, and he drifts back and forth between the comforting fury of the Champion and the skin-crawling anxiety of Shiro. Is he going to remember any of this, or will it all just fall into the pit in his brain where most of his memories of the last two years have gone? 

The guard leads him through a door into what looks like another locker room and makes him strip down so she can run some kind of handheld sonic cleaning device over him. She hands him a clean bodysuit (that he's going to bleed all over, probably) and then a big purple dress or robe or something that makes him feel a little bit more like a priest than someone going into a delivery room, and then leads him one of the doors across the room.

"Don't I need gloves? And a face mask, or - "

"How do any of you _survive_ on Earth?" she asks, and pushes him through the door.

The room isn't small, but it's crowded, and it's busy. There are six or seven guards and sentries posted all around and a cluster of Galra around Pidge - one of them must be the doctor who's done so much to her but Shiro has enough self-control not to attack anyone. Yet. Sendak isn't here, but Haxus is, leaning against a far wall, watching like he always does. Pidge, on an exam table tilted so sharply she almost looks like she's just standing with her feet in stirrups, is a mess, like an especially hard fight in the arena, a full varga of whirling around landing quick, deceptively dangerous cuts, and Shiro hurries to her side as fast as he thinks the guards will let him.

"Shiro," she gasps, reaches out and grabs the first part of him she can reach. It's a good thing it's his metal arm, he can see how hard she's squeezing from the muscles standing out up and down her arm.

"Hurts?"

Pidge shakes her head, sweaty hair clinging to her forehead. "Painkillers. I hate it, though."

"Yeah," he says, bends over to kiss her forehead and reaches out with his other hand so she can grab both. She squeezes a little more gently this time, a little _hello_ , a check-in, and Pidge trying to check on him when she's in the middle of this _hurts _, and not in the fun way. "How's it going?"__

__"Oh, just great," she says, so much like how she used to talk to Lance Shiro almost expects to turn and see him standing there._ _

__"You should be extinct," the man between Pidge's legs - the doctor, he must be - grumbles. "Your skeletons are all wrong."_ _

__"Weren't you supposed to fix what's wrong?" Shiro asks; the doctor glares at him for a tick or two and then goes back to paying attention to Pidge._ _

__"I told them it might be easier if my legs aren't strapped down," she says, "so I can change position."_ _

__"And make a run for it," Haxus says. "I'm not stupid."_ _

__Shiro hadn't even noticed the restraints, her legs strapped to the table and stirrups in three or four different places. The Champion claws at the inside of his head, roaring to get out and start punishing someone, anyone, everyone. "Does she look like she's in any condition to run?"_ _

__"Ah, yes," he says. "I forgot how impossible it is to fake distress, how silly of me. And of course there's no way she'd be trying to cause a distraction so _you_ could make your escape, because I certainly haven't watched her tell you to leave her behind and save yourself."_ _

__"I can see its head," Vonka says, "so if she's faking it I think her talent for subterfuge is being wasted here."_ _

__"See?" Shiro asks, but Haxus just rolls his eyes and nobody moves to unstrap her. Pidge squeezes his hands again, bruising hard, and grunts while she pushes. If Shiro focuses on her he might be able to keep his head on straight. Might._ _

__It's thankfully quiet for a while after that, just Pidge grunting and gasping and sometimes making soft, whimpering sounds, almost but not quite in pain even through the drugs, and Shiro murmuring encouragement in her ear when he isn't kissing her cheek, her neck, the shell of her ear, because he can't do anything else, and Vonka's occasional exasperated reminders to push, harder this time, a Galran woman would be ashamed to labor this long._ _

__An eternity passes before Vonka shouts in triumph, and does something Shiro can’t see with a nasty-looking instrument, and a baby starts crying, and Shiro's heart stops for a beat, two, three because that's _his_ baby. and this is awful, terrible, he shouldn't exist and Shiro can't protect him any more than he could protect Pidge and nearly everyone in this room wants something from him but he's _here_._ _

__"Push," Vonka says, over the crying, "if you want the rest of her."_ _

__Pidge actually laughs a little, high and wild, giddy with - relief? endorphins? the same weird mix of happiness and fear Shiro's drowning in? - and she pushes again, tearing up a little and squeezing Shiro's hands tight. His stomach churns, the longer the baby cries the more anxious he gets, can't protect her - _her_ \- can't protect Pidge, can't even take care of himself properly, won't even be able to spend any real time with her if Sendak doesn't decide they've been separated long enough. Shiro can't breathe but he can't abandon her right now either._ _

__"Shiro," Pidge gasps, "Shiro, Shiro."_ _

__"I'm here," he says, mostly true._ _

__"Shiro," she says again, "I did it."_ _

__Shiro looks up and Vonka has the baby in his arms, tiny and red and screaming with all the fury her little body can manage, cord stretching between her and Pidge. His heart stops, reboots, starts pumping in his chest with an entirely new rhythm; the Champion roars in his belly, proud and protective and wild with the need to rip her out of that Galra fucker's arms, rip the cord apart with his teeth so he can take her far, far away._ _

__"You did," he says, instead, bends down to kiss her forehead and then her soft chapped lips. When he straightens up again the cord's been cut, and Vonka takes a step towards him._ _

__"No," Haxus says, "bring her to me."_ _

__Shiro bristles; Haxus has no right. He starts to pull his hands away and Pidge lets him, frees him so he can move towards Vonka, close the gap and get his baby._ _

__"Sir," says one of the Galran women who was helping Vonka with the birth, "humans need these first few moments to bond."_ _

__"They don't need it," Haxus says. "They just think they do because they've only ever known weakness. Sendak wishes to see the child immediately."_ _

__"Our research shows - "_ _

__"I don't take orders from your research," he snaps. "The prisoners gave up the privilege of human bonding when they tried to escape."_ _

__Shiro keeps walking, small, measured steps so none of the guards or sentries think he's trying to make a move and restrain him._ _

__"I take my orders from Sendak as well," Vonka says, "and my orders are to ensure the child is healthy and strong enough for further research. I already told him he'd need to be here, or wait."_ _

__"And that was unsatisfactory, so I am here to take the third option. Give it to me, now, or I'll lock you up until you remember the chain of command."_ _

__Vonka steps towards him, but so does Shiro, faster now. He doesn't know he's going to do it until he does it; Haxus doesn't see it coming. It's so easy like that, when none of their defenses are up, when they don't fight back. Haxus' neck breaks with a satisfying snap that seems to echo through the room, and when Shiro lets go of his head he drops to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Shiro steps over the body to take the baby from a stunned Vonka - she's so small, too small, he could probably hold her in one hand if he tried, and she's still crying, good strong lungs, and she barely looks human and he loves her, he loves her - and carefully brings her to Pidge._ _

__No one moves. Shiro settles the baby against Pidge's chest, resting on the swell of her stomach, and as much as he wants to keep touching her he lets go as soon as Pidge is holding her. Whatever's about to happen has to happen with distance between Shiro and the two of them. No accidents, no collateral damage. He can keep them at least that safe, at least for now._ _

__"Shiro," Pidge says, and he can't read her tone, doesn't know what to say. And before he can figure it out, the spell that was cast over the rest of the room breaks, and it's chaos. All the guards, all the sentries, lunge for him at once, and Shiro was going to let them take him peacefully but they're attacking more than restraining and the Champion has other ideas. He snarls and lashes out; no one deactivated his arm after the fight, and he cuts through three sentries and leaves a gash in a guard's side with one swing._ _

__"Sendak will have your heads if you kill him," Vonka says, barely loud enough to be heard. "Especially since Haxus died on your watch. Don't be stupid."_ _

__Two of the guards manage to get hold of his arms, and a third has the presence of mind to pull out the remote and disable Shiro's arm (disable it all the way, so it hangs limp at his side and the full weight of all that metal pulls at his back muscles). The Champion roars and thrashes as they wrestle him to his knees. One of them has his wrist at a weird angle and when it breaks all the fight goes out of him, too tired for the adrenaline spike he usually gets from injuries. As soon as he's calm the guards and sentries stop, hold on to him rather than fighting him, and in the quiet he can hear Pidge crying a little and the baby not crying at all. He's lifted to his feet and dragged out of the room._ _

__"I'm going to tell Sendak what happened here," Vonka says over his shoulder as he joins the clump of guards. "Give them half a varga, then bring it straight to Sendak."_ _

__Shiro doesn't hear the rest of the conversation as he's dragged out into the hall; just before the door closes, he looks back, cranes his neck to see around the guards for one last glimpse of Pidge cuddled up with their baby, crying and messy and perfect._ _

__*_ _

__It's always been hard to keep track of time here; after Shiro kills Haxus Pidge stops trying at all. Sometimes Vonka or a nurse comes to take the baby for testing, and every time Pidge asks if they're going to be give her anything, start any treatments, and every time they say no and Pidge doesn't trust that but she keeps asking anyway. Sometimes Mertar comes to get her to bring her to Sendak, and Pidge doesn't ask if Sendak just has a secret fondness for cute babies because she doesn't want the answer to be no. Pidge doesn't know if it's quintants or weeks passing between those, and she doesn't care much. She hasn't seen Shiro since the baby was born and she doesn't need to know how long ago that was._ _

__"Easy, Champ," she says, wincing a little when the baby feeds a little too enthusiastically. At least she wants to eat. Pidge can barely choke her own food down, but it's easier to force herself through it when the baby's so hungry all the time. Shiro could be dead, for all she knows, or well on his way, or Sendak might never let him out of whatever place he's found to keep his broken trophy, and if all Pidge can do is keep his baby alive it's what she's going to do._ _

__Pidge floats when she feeds her little Champion, her little Matt Voltron Jr. or whatever, high on whatever magical chemicals her body produces to make up for everything that's happened to her body in the last nine - or five, she's pretty sure - phoebs. It's pretty good stuff, leaves her warm and drowsy and a little overwhelmed by how good it feels just to hold a life in her arms and take care of it. But soon enough it fades away, as the baby drinks her fill and switches from eating to napping. Pidge misses it when it goes, but with her head clear it's easier to think about how she's getting out of here._ _

__Taking Shiro isn't an option, as long as she doesn't know where he is or what condition he's in. Even if there were a way to quickly search the whole station, if she found him unconscious, or unable to walk, she wouldn't be able to carry him and she'd have wasted so much time. She'll come back for him; he'll understand. Pidge can probably figure out how to turn one of her sheets into a sling for the baby so she can keep her hands free, and she'll have an advantage over every sentry and guard that gets in her way if they have to worry about accidentally killing Sendak's precious new trophy. All she needs is a plan to get from this room to the hangar access, some way to activate all the security that requires a Galra handprint, and for the ship in the hangar to have controls she can figure out quickly. Just a few minor details._ _

__The free weights in the gym are just small bars, with tech to set them lighter or heavier kind of like Shiro's arm, and she might be able to smuggle one out. Or just have one in hand when Mertar opens the door to take her back to her room, so she can bludgeon Mertar with it right there. Pidge always has the baby with her in the gym anyway, and it's almost a straight shot to the room she and Shiro were trying to make a baby in for so long, where she knows exactly where the access door is. But she can't drag Mertar all that way, and she won't have anything sharp to sever one of her hands._ _

__And even if it all works out, even if she fills in the gaps in the plan and everything goes perfectly and she's sitting in the cockpit of a ship she instantly understands how to fly, then she'll have to take off and actually face the reality of leaving Shiro behind. He'd tell her she's strong enough to do it, but Pidge isn't sure he'd be right. If nothing else, she'd hesitate, and there's no room for that._ _

__Pidge sighs and tips her head back against the wall. She doesn't have a choice; she's not going to die here and this baby isn't going to die here and if Shiro can make it until she comes back for him he's not going to die here either. The little Champion makes soft, sweet noises in her sleep, and Pidge lets herself take a break, tunes out the rest of the world and the rest of her thoughts and lets the baby tempt her into falling asleep._ _


	10. vi: Hunk

Voltron's arrival created plenty of chaos at Sendak's base, exactly as expected. Hunk pushes against the flow of Galra and their sentries, firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Everyone's racing down and away from Hunk's goal, which means he won't have to deal with much once he gets there but Lance and Allura, waiting at strategic choke points to make sure as few Galra make it to their fighters as possible, have their work cut out for them. They'll be fine, of course, but it's one thing to know how many Galra are on this station, in this quadrant, and another to see it. 

The rudimentary plans the Marmora managed - _Keith_ managed - to get their hands on are pretty accurate so far; the corridor Hunk's in spirals up like it should, nice and straightforward. If they managed to destroy Sendak's escape route with the initial Voltron strike, it's the last thing that's going to be straightforward, but Hunk's been training with the biggest dummy the Castle could come up with nonstop since they found Sendak's hiding place, and he's not worried. Mostly.

"Updates?" Hunk asks, not really expecting any answers, not yet.

"Kind of busy, bro," Lance says, and Hunk can hear his gun firing before he's finished talking.

"I'm cloaked and in position," Coran says. "Just say the word when you're ready to run."

No answer from Matt, or the update he wants most, from Keith, but Hunk hasn't even made it to his target yet so he knows he's just being anxious. But there was only one human life sign (and something else, maybe, or just some interference; the scanners have sometimes told them two humans, sometimes one) in the Commander's quarters, and it didn't give off any of the funky readings Shiro's arm would have, and most of the lower levels had shielding their scanners couldn't break through. Battling Sendak isn't any small task, but at least Hunk knows where Pidge is and that if nothing else she's alive. Keith doesn't have that luxury, and there are so many places to look. If Hunk could have gone with him - but he has a team of Blades, and Hunk needs to be right where he is.

One last spiral and there they are, Sendak's quarters, doors that look like every other set of doors on the ship but at the same time more imposing. Hunk presses his gauntlet to the door, lets the neat little program Matt wrote replicate whatever input it needs, and braces himself as the door slides open. 

Nothing happens. No one charges, no one shoots at him, no alarms start blaring or traps go off or...anything. Hunk lets out the breath he was holding and steps inside. It's as empty as it is quiet, a large sitting room with plush chairs and a spread of snacks on one coffee table and no occupants. There are a bunch of doors leading off the room and Hunk cycles through them; a big bedroom, with a sex swing and a lot of nasty-looking toys, or torture devices, or both laid out on top of a dresser. Off the bedroom there's a big bathroom and another sitting room full of lounges covered in plush pillows. There's another bedroom next to the first, not set up for sex torture or whatever but still pretty fancy, and it shares a bathroom with one more bedroom, small and bare with chairs arranged around the bed like they're watching a movie in the barracks with someone's laptop resting on the bed. Probably not what Sendak was doing, though.

One wall is taken up by an open door, leading to a poorly-lit tunnel. Hunk knew there was hangar access up here, and all he can do is hope Voltron managed to land a hit on the right part of the hangar bay to leave Sendak stranded. Or, at the very least, that he didn't grab Pidge and escape with her. 

Hunk turns back to the main room; there aren't any doors on the other wall, just a hallway. Hopefully there aren't too many more rooms down there; if Sendak did take Pidge, every second he spends checking up here is a waste. As he crosses towards it he sees - something (an arm? A weird shadow?) so he ducks behind a couch and peeks around the far side of it for a better look. It's a guard, a real Galra, not a sentry bot, standing in front of one of the three doors. Do they not know what's going on, or are they more worried about the punishment for leaving their post than getting blown up, or - doesn't matter. Hunk screws his eyes shut, takes a deep breath, another, one more. He's never gotten good at this part, at standing in front of someone one-to-one and deciding to pull the trigger. He's probably killed hundreds of Galra by now, but mostly in big groups, or from his lion, and he's - it'd be nice if Lance were here, for this part. Either to take the shot or pat Hunk's shoulder and talk him down after he takes it.

But Lance was more important somewhere else, and Hunk needs to be here. He opens his eyes, and leans around the corner, and fires.

"Is someone - " the guard says, and then falls to the ground. As far as last words go, they're not great. Hunk shakes his head a little, shakes it off, and hurries down the hallway, steps over the guard's smoking body to open the door.

Pidge is there. Like, real Pidge, actual Pidge, living breathing Pidge, not any of the dream Pidges he's rescued or the nightmare Pidges he's watched die. Not one of the hallucination Pidges he sees in the kitchen sometimes or sitting at her workstation when he hasn't slept enough. He knows she's real because she barely looks like Pidge, sitting naked on the bed with her head backed against the wall, her hair long and stringy, her arms and legs made of pure muscle, and a baby in her arms. So that's - the other life sign wasn't a glitch, just too little to pick up. A baby. Shit.

"Pidge," he says, and then stops, doesn't know what else to say. No cheesy action hero lines come to mind, no stupid engineering puns, nothing but static and her name.

She turns her head and blinks at him, slow, sleepy, and it takes her a second to register what's going on but when she does her whole face lights up and yeah, there, she does look exactly like the Pidge he knew, the one he imagines.

"Hunk!" she says, and clamps her mouth shut. No yelling in front of a sleeping baby, so she can’t yell, because she’s holding a baby. When she talks again it's a whisper. "Are you real?"

"Pretty sure," he says; Pidge nods.

"Good enough. Get me out of here."

"Should we, uh - clothes? Or we can wrap you in a sheet, I guess, or if you just want to go like this, maybe you like being naked now, that's your thing, that's okay but uh it might weird out a couple of the others but your comfort matters more than - "

"I have clothes," she says, stands up carefully from the bed and holds out the baby. "Hold her."

The baby is tiny. Like, so tiny, doesn't even look human in Hunk's big arms. But she would be, he guesses, because it's not like Pidge is a big or even normal-sized person so of course a tiny version of her would be way, way too small to be allowed. Hunk was too young to hold any of his brothers or cousins when they were this small, he's never held anything this small. Anything alive, anyway. Except the mice.

"Okay," Pidge says, now fully covered in a black bodysuit like the one Hunk has under his armor. She takes the baby back, to Hunk's relief and disappointment, and nestles her in the crook of one arm so she has one hand free. "Let's go."

"Hold up," Hunk says, lifts his arm so his gauntlet's right between the two of them. "I got Pidge."

The chorus of whoops and _thank fuck_ s is almost deafening for a second, and when it dies down the only voice left is - 

"Matt?" Pidge says, grabs at Hunk's wrist with her free hand. "What the fuck, why are you - how are you - you're _here_?"

"Of course I'm here, Katie. Are you okay? What happened, what have you - are you okay?"

"Okay," Hunk says, "sorry, I need you guys to do this part once we're back on the ship, okay?"

Pidge doesn't loosen her grip on his wrist, but she nods, eyes glittery with tears. Hunk feels like the worst person in the world but they really, really can't linger. If they did stop Sendak from escaping, he could come back any tick.

"Right," Matt says. "I've got a guy down here in medical, says he's a doctor who 'did most of the work on the girl', whatever that means, and he says if we just take him prisoner, don't kill him, he'll give us information?"

"Scan his face," Pidge says, and slowly but surely a hologram develops over Hunk's wrist, a rough scan of some Galra's head. Pidge sighs. "Don't kill him. Make sure he brings every file he has on me, every single one. And knock him the fuck out if he gives you any trouble."

"What work - "

" _Matt_ ," Keith cuts in, loud and stressed and Hunk can see the exact face he's making, frustrated and furious. "Do this later. Pidge, do you know where they're keeping Shiro?"

"Not exactly," Pidge says, ignores Keith's frustrated groan. "But he killed Sendak's second-in-command, and the shittiest cells are on the last level before the hangar. He might - I haven't seen him for a couple weeks, Keith, maybe a full phoeb, you might - I don't know what you'll find."

"Fuck," Keith snaps, and goes silent. Maybe Hunk could send Pidge on her way to Coran and go after him, be there for him just in case, but - Pidge is carrying a baby and no weapons, and Hunk has his job to do.

"Coran, what's the quickest way from me to you?" Hunk asks, and his gauntlet pings.

"Sent you a route," he says. "We missed Sendak's private hangar, so I'm parked there. I'll uncloak when I see you."

Hunk takes off running almost before Coran's finished speaking, ready to be out of this place. Not as ready as Pidge is, probably; she stumbles a little behind him, unsteady on her legs for reasons Hunk can only imagine (and he refuses to imagine them), and she paused to look at the guard’s body with a look on her face Hunk can’t read, but she keeps up, and they're running up the ramp into Green's welcoming mouth in no time at all.

Coran starts babbling questions, as fast as only he can, and to Hunk's surprise Pidge matches his speed, answers him even when he jumps between three questions in one sentence. How had he forgotten that about Pidge, how much else did he forget? She's been lost for almost longer than Hunk knew her for. He leaves them to their catching up, ducks into a back alcove so he can check in one more time.

"We're heading out," he says. "Status?"

"I've got the doctor and I'm on my way to the Castle," Matt says.

"Lance and I are keeping the skies clear, we'll follow as soon as you and Keith take off."

Silence, after that; everything going to plan except - 

"Keith?" Hunk says; there's no reply. "Keith, do you need - "

"We have him," Keith shouts, voice thick with tears everyone else will be nice enough not to notice. When they get back, when Hunk can pry Keith away from Shiro, he'll get him somewhere quiet and alone where he can get it all out.

"Is he okay?" Pidge asks; Hunk glances around the corner to see her kneeling next to the console, the lion's ambient microphone picking her up.

"He's alive," Keith says. It's not a super encouraging answer, but Pidge just nods and sighs, long and relieved.

"Then let's get out of here," Hunk says, and in only a couple doboshes the Green Lion is up and out of the bay doors, and Pidge starts crying so hard Coran reaches down to gently take the baby from her so she can curl up on the floor. Hunk sits down next to her, pulls her head into his lap, and they fly clustered around the console like that all the way back to the Castle.

Green's only a little behind Blue, just long enough so Matt's standing there waiting when they land with his arms already outstretched. 

"Want me to carry you?" Hunk asks; Pidge shakes her head and rises shakily to her feet. Coran hands her the baby, and she makes her way carefully down the ramp to fling the both of them into Matt's arms at Green's open mouth. Matt catches her, cradles her so carefully against him, and they sort of crumple to their knees together, crying and smiling and holding on tight.

"Who's this?" Matt keeps asking, looking at the baby. "Who the fuck is this?"

Pidge is completely ignoring him, repeating her own questions about where he's been and what happened and how he's even here, and Hunk knew he was going to cry but it hits him so hard, all at once, he almost stumbles. They're so _happy_ , and there were quintants when Hunk would have done anything to get Matt out of his blanket burrito on the couch, make him smile even a little, and he - maybe he'll be okay, now. Better, at least.

The soft whoosh of a ship smaller than a lion ruffles the back of Hunk's hair; he looks up to see the repurposed Galra fighter Keith flies on missions with the Blades. Hunk wants to rush to Keith, be right there for him, and he wants to get between Pidge and the ship until he knows how bad Shiro looks, how much it might upset her, and he wants to tear himself from the reunion and get to the kitchen because they'll all be starving, and he can't figure out which of those is best so he just freezes. Keith hops out of the ship, and another Marmora agent behind him, and the agents still in the ship carefully lower Shiro down to them. His face is so bruised he almost looks Galra, his metal arm hangs limply at his side, and one of his legs is bent in way too many places, but at least it doesn't look like he's actively bleeding. Keith and the other agent get him propped up on their shoulders and almost charge forward. 

"Medical pod," Keith says, "medical pod, medical pod, medical pod _now_."

Coran jumps into action, then, hurrying ahead of them to get a pod set up so all they'll have to do is drop Shiro right in. But Shiro glances up, and Shiro sees Pidge, and Shiro lunges for her so hard he wrenches himself right out of Keith's grip and falls on his face. Hunk winces; Keith looks a little lost. Pidge tears herself away from Matt, shuffles toward Shiro on her knees with the baby in her arms and as soon as she gets close he pushes up onto his knees, wincing the whole time. Pidge sets the baby in the crook of his good arm, where she looks even smaller, and Shiro kisses her like that's going to heal him. Huh. So...wow. 

Hunk steps around behind Keith so he can wrap his arms around him, comforting himself and maybe, hopefully, comforting Keith a little. Keith lets out a harsh sigh, but he doesn't start demanding they save this for after Shiro's been healed, so it's something. Red and Yellow land a few doboshes apart, completing the circle around the reunion, and Lance and Allura join the semicircle watching the reunion. Lance tilts his head and squints at the couple kissing and crying on the floor.

"Whoa," he says, tilts his head the other way. "Huh."

They shouldn't all be standing around staring at this, not just because Shiro really does need medical attention but because it feels so special, so private. Pidge breaks their kiss to rest her head on Shiro's shoulder, taking big heaving breaths, and Hunk can't understand what Shiro's saying but he's murmuring something over and over to her, a little frantic, holding the baby - their baby - tight. Keith tenses more and more in Hunk's arms the longer they all stand frozen.

"Pidge," Matt says, gets up to walk over and crouch next to her, rest his hands on her shoulders. "Katie, we need to get him to a pod."

She nods and scoots back into him, but Shiro growls a little, follows her as best he can in the pain he must be in. Hunk glances at Allura and she nods, steps slowly into their space on the floor until she can scoop Shiro, still holding the baby, up in her arms to carry him bridal-style out of the room. He growls, but at least he doesn't struggle and hurt himself more.

"Pidge," she says, "would you come with us? I'd like to take a look at you, too."

Pidge nods, eyes locked on Shiro, and lets Matt help her up, leans heavily on him so he's carrying her almost as much as supporting her. When they're out of the room, Hunk sighs, big and relieved, and laughs a little when Lance does too. There's a tangible change in the air, with Shiro and Pidge and the intensity of their reunion out of the room, and Hunk takes a few deep breaths just because he can. Keith grumbles and pulls out of his arms.

"He's going to be okay," Hunk says, and Keith doesn't react but that means he doesn't argue, and that's something.

"I'm gonna go stay with him," Keith says, but before he goes he turns, face a little pink, and presses a quick kiss to Hunk's cheek. "Thanks."

_Maybe when we find him_ , Keith had said a thousand times, always corrected it to _them_ but Hunk knew what he meant, knew Keith would tear himself apart with guilt if they found Pidge dead and Shiro alive and knew he'd eventually get over it if he had Shiro. Hunk hadn't really thought it would be so _soon_ , though - and maybe it isn't. Maybe that wasn't the gesture Hunk's reading it as.

Lance wolf-whistles and slings his arm over Hunk's shoulder.

"Smooth," he says. "I know you're about to cook enough food for a hundred people, I'll be your assistant chef."

Hunk smiles at him, can feel how thin and exhausted it must look but it's not like Lance's usual easygoing smile is all that convincing either. 

"I'll meet you there," he says, and then Lance is gone and he's alone in the hangar. Hunk closes his eyes, focuses on his breathing for a few ticks, in and out and in and out in a steady, meditative rhythm. When he can keep the rhythm up without thinking about it, he reaches out for the Black Lion, anchored to Sendak's station, left behind so he could stay with Pidge on the way back. She doesn't mind; she's patient like that. She wakes up at his call, eyes glowing wild and bright in the dark, and detaches from the station, starts making her way home.

Soon everyone will be home, and safe, and for the first time in a long, long time Hunk will know where everyone is, and that they're okay (at least as okay as they can be), and he is going to do anything - everything - in his power to keep it that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And just because I spent more time than necessary or reasonable playing the paladin-to-lion puzzle game:
> 
> Immediately post-abduction:  
> Black: Hunk  
> Red: Keith  
> Green: Coran  
> Blue: Lance  
> Yellow: Allura
> 
> When Keith leaves:  
> Black: Hunk  
> Red: Lance  
> Green: Coran  
> Blue: Matt  
> Yellow: Allura


End file.
